Vail Resorts & PEG exploring alternatives for offsite parking

PEG wants to redevelop the parking lots at the base of Park City Mountain, to create a hotel, condos, and commercial space. Photo: TownLift

PARK CITY, Utah — On Wednesday Park City Planning Director Gretchen Milliken read a joint letter from Vail Resorts and PEG Companies about the delay in their application for the Park City Mountain base area.

The letter was signed by PEG Companies President Robert Schmidt and Kara Boyer, the director of land use and community development at Vail Resorts.

PEG is seeking to amend the 1998 development agreement on the lot at the base of the resort, and they are asking for exceptions to limits on building height and parking. Planning commissioners have expressed doubt about the use of satellite lots (Munchkin, Park City High School, various Park and Rides) to make up for the lack of parking spots at the base under the proposal.

In their latest meeting in February, it was announced that paid parking would be implemented under the redevelopment.

In February, Schmidt said that a planning commission vote could come as soon as May.

TownLift transcribed parts of the letter and has posted highlights below:

We very much appreciate the commission’s feedback at the February hearing about our offsite parking proposal. In response, we went back through the record over the past two years to catalog the various requests from the commissioners, recognizing the challenges of reviewing a large application entirely via Zoom hearings. Our review showed that we had provided or had addressed in public meetings the information that had been requested and the basis for keeping the proposal information as presented…

Several commissioners in February expressed concerns about the accuracy of our traffic counts since they were taken in 2017. The resort and PEG worked very quickly following the February meeting to have traffic engineers gather counts over two weekends that included Presidents’ Day weekend and the following weekend during which local ski programs were in session…

The updated counts taken are largely consistent with the counts used in our traffic analysis contained in our application proposal. In fact, our traffic analysis grew those counts based on anticipated regional growth, the inclusion of the project, and other projected development, meaning the information provided in our original traffic study includes larger counts, thereby driving more mitigation than has actually been observed as necessary on the ground today…

In addition to updated traffic counts, we have been working with staff on their feedback on our current proposal for offsite parking mitigation. We understand that the planning commission also requested staff feedback on the proposal that was not available at the last meeting.

Lastly, we continue to explore other alternatives for potential offsite parking locations. In response to the commission’s concerns about the resort’s use of Quinn’s Junction Park and Ride (voted down by city council) and more dispersed parking options that utilize areas that are not controlled by the resort…

We look forward to continuing our discussions and hope that this letter addresses our desire to maximize additional time to bring forward the analysis and information requested by planning commission.

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Milliken said that there is currently not a scheduled meeting with PEG and Vail in May. She said that she assumes their updated traffic studies will be presented when they come back to the commission.

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