Park City Mountain lift upgrade appeal to be reviewed Wednesday

The appeal follows a winter season where many grew angry with Park City Mountain's owner Vail Resorts. Photo: TownLift

PARK CITY, Utah — On Wednesday evening the Park City Planning Commission will review an appeal for the approved upgrade of the Silverlode and Eagle lifts at Park City Mountain.

The appeal was filed by four residents — Clive Bush, Angela Moschetta, Deb Rentfrow, and Mark Stemler.

The planning department held a public hearing on the proposed upgrades on April 25, and at that meeting, Park City Planning Director Gretchen Milliken approved the plans.

The lift upgrades only required an administrative conditional use permit (CUP) because of a 1998 development agreement between the resort and the city. An administrative CUP only calls for department review and does not involve the planning commission.

As part of its parking mitigation strategy in the application, Park City Mountain announced that a paid parking reservation system will be in place at the Mountain Village next winter.

A consultant hired by the resort concluded that a $25 per day price structure would reduce parking demand by 11%.

Park City planning staff wrote that the consultant’s report “sufficiently demonstrated” that the fee program will offset “any potential increases in parking demand resulting from” the lift upgrades.

The appeal states that “paid parking without commensurate offsite services to accommodate displaced drivers is insufficient to prove this mitigation strategy will work, or that paid parking will not cause intrusion into nearby streets and other businesses’ premises.”

Several conditions of approval established in the administrative CUP aim to tackle parking issues. One requires Park City Mountain to reinvest the net proceeds from paid parking in “transportation, transit, traffic mitigation, and/or parking measures to support guest access to the resort and traffic mitigation in and around the resort.”

Another requirement says that the resort must meet with city planning staff bi-annually to provide parking and traffic information.

The appeal also alleges that Milliken is in violation of the land management code in both reviewing the lift upgrade plan and taking final action.

Section 2.3 of the 1998 agreement states, “development of the skiing and related facilities as identified in the Mountain Upgrade plan is a conditional use within the city limits and is a subject to administrative review.”

Upgrades to the King Con and Motherlode lifts in 2015 underwent the same approval process.

Ecosign, a consultant hired by Park City Municipal to review the upgrade plan, said the following in a report:

If the lower section of Eagle does in fact service exactly the same terrain as Three Kings, we could imagine a situation where the existing Three Kings lift would basically go unused during the bulk of the day, due to the attractiveness of the new Eagle lift. If this does happen, then we can imagine that the lift company would choose not to operate that lift (as it would be running empty)

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The planning commission’s decision can be appealed to District Court within 30 days.

The meeting on Wednesday begins at 5:30 p.m in council chambers at the Marsac Building. A public hearing will be held before any action is taken. (Zoom link)