Suddenly, we are two weeks away from ski season opening. There is some natural snow, and the guns are blasting when it’s cold enough. The summer toys are stowed and the ski gear is lost in the basement. I always enjoy the anticipation of the seasonal transition.
In 40 years of observing how this town works, it feels like relations with the ski areas are at a low point. Approvals for development that were more or less in the can decades ago have become controversial, and conditions have changed in ways the old approvals couldn’t anticipate. Nobody factored in the population of the state doubling, multi-resort passes, and a housing market that has pushed the workers out of town. What looked workable years ago maybe doesn’t work as well now.
Forty years ago, if you lived here, you made your living in the ski industry, either directly or only slightly indirectly. The connection between tourist spending and the total of your tips at the end of the night was readily apparent, especially this time of year when there were no tourists. Now, the portion of in-town residents connected to the tourism economy is pretty small. If you are making your living online in some far-off city, or retired, the tourists are not funding your rent — they are in the way. But the tourist spending does fund the things that make life here so nice. We live well beyond our means because of them.
The divergence in the interests of the local residents and the ski areas may have been inevitable, but it’s not healthy. The relationships on so many levels need a reset. Everybody is acting, and more often, reacting, independently.
Part of the problem is us. I ski with a group of friends scattered from Summit Park to Woodland and Midway. There is no logical car pool, so we all show up one person to a car and whine about the parking situation. It’s reasonable to expect that to change. So the resort charges for parking, the grocery store buys a tow truck, and the city makes it a felony to park on the street. And we pretend that has solved anything.
Some people think Park City should be a gated community. If you don’t live here, you don’t drive into town. I’ve pointed out that if that happened, when they go out to dinner, they would have to do their own dishes. But the idea of capturing some traffic outside of town and bringing people in on a frequent and efficient shuttle seems to be inevitable. You get to Zermatt by train. You get to Mackinac Island by ferry. People find it charming. Nobody finds 224 or 248 traffic charming.
There are solutions out there. I’d love to see Park City Mountain, Deer Valley, the city and the county work together. It probably needs to involve Mayflower (get a hold of the MIDA cash spigot) and Hideout. The only available place seems to be Richardson Flat. Done right, that could become the launch pad for Park City and the resorts. Getting from there to town could be anything from a gondola, shuttle buses like we had during the Olympics, or even a rail system. I suspect the mechanics of it would have to grow over time, starting with buses. Deer Valley traffic might end up at the Deer Crest base, and never go through town at all. If there is ever a connection between Mayflower and Deer Valley, a shuttle that drops day skiers and workers off at the Mayflower base could put them at the Sultan chair in one lift ride. I’m in.
The Larry H. Miller group owns about 1,200 acres at Richardson Flat. That presents a world of opportunities that aren’t there if you are dealing with multiple owners. It takes a lot of imagination to see opportunity at Richardson Flat.
Forty years ago, it took a lot of imagination to see Deer Valley as anything other than an abandoned industrial site where we used to dump old refrigerators and shoot them full of holes. Nothing happens overnight. A satellite parking lot, accessed by a new on- and off-ramp from U.S. 40 (relieving the pressure on Quinns), could absorb a lot of traffic that is now in town. In the near term, the frontier could be tamed with food trucks and maybe après-ski bands and tailgate parties. Longer term, the Miller Group surely didn’t buy it as a coyote preserve. Eventually the parking lot is located with commercial property that can share the parking (did somebody say Trader Joe’s?), day care, coffee shops, and if somebody can find a water supply for it, a lot of middle-class housing.
If a shuttle system would get me to the base of the lift in the same amount of time I now spend cursing in traffic on 248, and saved me $25/day, I would use it. And there could be tacos waiting after skiing. If there’s one bus every 20 minutes with 1,000 people standing in the tundra waiting to board, it will fail miserably.
It will take a collaborative effort by the ski areas and local governments. The parties don’t seem to play well with others. That needs to change and a well-planned, jointly funded solution needs to be worked out.