The dispute about a set of lift improvements sought by Park City Mountain has stretched for more than four years.
And the resort, as well as the wider community, could have to wait up to another 15 business days for a crucial next step.
A hearing officer tapped by the municipal government, civil trial lawyer Tim Pack, on Thursday officiated an appeal of a Park City Planning Commission approval of the lift upgrades. He did not render a decision after a hearing that stretched longer than three hours.
Pack indicated a decision will be made within 15 business days, putting it during the first workweek of August. He also said that he would like to issue the decision before then.
Park City Mountain wants to replace the existing Eagle and Eaglet lifts with a six-passenger lift and install an eight-passenger lift to replace the current six-passenger Silverlode Express lift. The efforts became mired in procedural matters and were taken to state court before returning to the Marsac Building earlier this year. The Planning Commission in late May ultimately approved the upgrades, prompting the appeal that was heard on Thursday.
Six individuals — Frode Jensen, Catherine Jensen, Alan Theis, Marvin Kabatznick, Andrea Griffis and Allan Inglis — filed the appeal. It seeks a reversal of the approvals of the improvements and for the upgrades to be sent back to the Planning Commission with instructions to address the impacts the new lifts would have.
The appeal wants the Planning Commission to address the resort’s comfortable carrying capacity, commonly called CCC, an industry metric measuring the size of crowds that a resort can accommodate. The group is concerned about safety on the slopes and parking issues.
Park City Mountain has argued the upgrades are meant to modernize the resort’s infrastructure and improve the guest experience with better circulation and reduced congestion on the slopes. Wait times for skiers and snowboarders would be reduced, the resort has indicated.
Hyrum Bosserman, an attorney representing the individuals who filed the appeal, reviewed the history of the 1990s-era development approvals at the Park City side of Park City Mountain, including a plan for mountain upgrades. He spoke about the comfortable carrying capacity, saying that metric drives lots of the planning for the resort’s services. He spoke about a balance between uphill and downhill capacity, asserting that the uphill capacity would increase substantially with the upgrades.
“It’s illogical for you to say that we are upgrading our lifts, that we’re going to have X amount, 600 more people per hour going in a certain lift, right? Twenty percent more, 55% more here. And to say that isn’t going to be more skiers on the mountain. The Court of Appeals said that’s illogical and odd for them to even suggest that … And that’s why the CCC analysis is so important here,” Bosserman said.
He also said the individuals “just want the city to follow its own regulations. The city was obviously aware of the CCCs. It was a central point of the last litigation. It was expressly talked about by the Court of Appeals, the district court and the Planning Commission last go around. And this time, what we’re seeing here, we believe, is just an attempt to end run the (mountain upgrade plan) and … all of the analysis required to even know whether you can sufficiently mitigate these detrimental impacts.”
Christopher Hogle, an attorney representing Park City Mountain, argued the Planning Commission worked within the municipal government’s detailed development rules.
“It followed that, and that should be the end of it,” he said. “But what the appellants do is they say, well, yeah, but in addition, you have to follow an agreement that they’re strangers to, and you have to follow a master plan approved by a Planning Commission, and you have to follow the 2022 Planning Commission, their grant of an appeal. Those aren’t land-use ordinances or land-use regulations. They can’t form the basis for the appellants’ appeal.”
He also claimed the people involved in the appeal “lack standing. They’re not adversely affected parties. They don’t have adjoining property, property adjoining the resort … There’s no record of any damage that they will suffer as a result of the land-use decision.”
Pack answered that the people appealing the approval argue that they are regular skiers at Park City Mountain and say they will suffer damage as a result of safety impacts. Hogle countered that the Planning Commission made findings associated with safety, circulation and the way skiers are dispersed on the slopes.
The testimony at the May meeting, when the Planning Commission approved the upgrades, tilted heavily in favor of the improvements, as speakers mentioned the aging infrastructure at the resort and an anticipation that new lifts would not lead to overcrowding on the slopes.