Friday, March 9, 2012 in Park City started in a similar fashion to just about any other day late in that ski season, as the community continued a strong emergence from the recession nearly four years before and as the local ski industry — the trio of Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley Resort and Canyons Resort — was enjoying the fruits of the recovery.
By the end of that day, although not apparent to many at the time, the course of Park City’s future had been fundamentally altered. Wednesday marks the 10-year anniversary of the filing of a lawsuit that would stun the community, bring Vail Resorts to Park City and ultimately lead to a sale of PCMR to the Colorado-based operator of mountain resorts that has left some in the community longing for the era before the case.
PCMR, then owned by Powdr Corp., brought the lawsuit in 3rd District Court against a firm called Talisker Land Holdings, LLC, which owned the acreage underlying most of the slopes. The case centered on the PCMR lease of the land and whether it was renewed by the resort. The president and general manager of PCMR at the time, Jenni Smith, said that day “Park City Mountain Resort could be forced to close” if it did not prevail.
The crucial rulings went against PCMR, and Vail Resorts eventually entered the case in the spring of 2013 on the side of Talisker Land Holdings, LLC. Vail Resorts reached a long-term deal with Talisker Corporation to lease and operate Canyons Resort with the possibility the agreement could be extended to the PCMR terrain if the lawsuit ended favorably. More than a year later, with the case slipping away from the PCMR side, the parties reached a settlement with the sale of PCMR to Vail Resorts for $182.5 million.
Vail Resorts later linked PCMR and Canyons Resort with a gondola, creating a sprawling destination for skiers and snowboarders stretching between Old Town and Canyons Village.
In the years since, there has been a continual distrust of Vail Resorts by a segment of the Park City population even as the community has performed well economically. The critics over the last decade see the sale of PCMR and the arrival of Vail Resorts as bringing a corporate vibe and large crowds to Park City. The traffic is worse, the community is more expensive and the skiing experience is diminished, the critics say. The issues have been especially pronounced during the current ski season, causing an outcry against the Vail Resorts management of PCMR that has covered topics like traffic, parking, crowded slopes and the quality of the on-mountain dining.
The lawsuit stretched through two mayoral administrations in Park City. Dana Williams was serving a third and final term as mayor when the case was filed, while one-term Mayor Jack Thomas was in office during some of the moments of greatest courtroom tension and at the time the sides settled. City Hall was not a party to the lawsuit, but each of the mayors understood the stakes. Williams was able to largely navigate around the early months of the case, but Thomas inserted the municipal government into the fray as concerns grew about the impact on the wider community.
In interviews as the 10-year anniversary approached, Williams and Thomas spoke about the lawsuit and its influence on Park City of today. Although Williams has been out of office a little more than eight years and Thomas left the Marsac Building in early 2018, each of them has watched the changes in the community since the Vail Resorts acquisition of PCMR. Williams has been especially critical of the firm, becoming one of the prominent figures in a controversy about a Vail Resorts effort to secure a trademark for the name “Park City” and, more recently, telling Park City’s elected officials the issues this ski season are damaging the brand of Park City.
“I can’t say it has changed for the better,” Thomas said about the community when talking about the legacy of the lawsuit and sale of PCMR.
He speculated there are more skiers and snowboarders in Park City nowadays than there would be if the lawsuit had never occurred and Powdr Corp. retained ownership of PCMR. Thomas described the Epic Pass, a Vail Resorts multi-resort season-pass product, as increasing the local numbers. PCMR was added to the Epic Pass lineup after the acquisition.
“As a skier, I think this has diminished the quality of the experience,” he said, explaining skiers from across Vail Resorts-owned properties, a “flood of people from their network of ownership,” have visited Park City.
Thomas, meanwhile, said the sale of PCMR resulted in a different sort of relationship between the leadership of the community and the resort. If PCMR remained under the Powdr Corp. umbrella, Thomas said, “I believe we would have had better dialogue with the resort owners.”
“Evolution and growth of the resort would have occurred at a slower rate,” he said, surmising the planning for the future of PCMR would have been conducted in a more appropriate manner under Powdr Corp. than it has with Vail Resorts.
Williams sees Park City as a more profit-centric community than it was prior to the Vail Resorts acquisition of PCMR. The ownership change altered the dynamic of the operations of PCMR, he said, describing the difference as “return on investment compared to the daily skier experience.”
“I don’t think it has changed for the better at all. Quite the opposite,” Williams said.
He could not identify “anything whatsoever that’s better” at PCMR as a result of the Vail Resorts ownership. Instead, he said, the last decade has witnessed the “sanitization of the resort and the loss of its funk.”
“It’s not who we are,” he said, adding, “I lament that loss, the loss of the former owners of the resort.”