A municipal hearing officer on Wednesday ruled in favor of a set of long-disputed lift improvements at Park City Mountain, affirming a Park City Planning Commission decision in the spring that triggered a challenge from a group of individuals saying they were worried about the impacts of new lifts.
Tim Pack issued the 16-page decision two weeks after he officiated a three hour-plus appeal of the approvals of the improvements.
Park City Mountain is bidding 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 prior to a Planning Commission process this year that resulted in a unanimous approval.
The group of individuals — Frode Jensen, Catherine Jensen, Alan Theis, Marvin Kabatznick, Andrea Griffis and Allan Inglis — subsequently appealed the decision.
Pack’s decision was a wide-ranging nod in favor of the process. He covered key issues in the dispute, such as the sort of municipal route employed to review the improvements, safety on the slopes and the comfortable carrying capacity, or CCC, which is an industry metric measuring the size of crowds that a resort believes it can accommodate. A 1990s-era development approval involving the Park City-side base of Park City Mountain, including a mountain upgrade plan referred to as the MUP, helped guide the decision.
Some of the important passages, with the resort referred to as PCM, include:
- “Appellants contend that because the lift upgrades will increase lift capacity, this will result in a proportional rise in the number of skiers who visit the resort, and this boost in skiers on the mountain will exacerbate overcrowding and downhill trail congestion thereby creating unsafe conditions. However, the evidence does not support the existence of a casual relationship between increased lift capacity and an increase in skiers on the trails.”
- “Appellants contend the evidence that would show a causal connection between increased lift capacity and skier visitation is contained in PCM’s CCC data, which it did not submit and which the commission did not require. While the CCC may have been helpful to better understand that casual relationship, or indeed whether such a relationship even exists, I cannot speculate as to what that data says or means. That data is not in the record and therefore cannot be considered.”
- “Even if the evidence led to the conclusion that more skiers would visit the resort as a direct result of the lift upgrades, the record still does not support the conclusion that skier safety would be adversely affected. … CCC, as it is described in the MUP, does not address skier safety. Rather, it is ‘the optimal level of utilization for the ski area … which guarantees a pleasant recreational experience .…’ The purpose of the CCC calculation is ‘to balance the uphill capacity of the lift systems with the downhill capacity of ski trails.’ The MUP does not claim that skier safety will be impacted if recommended CCC numbers are exceeded. While the MUP supports the conclusion that exceeded CCC numbers may decrease the quality of the skier experience, it does not necessarily support the conclusion that skier safety will be adversely affected.”
Pack also wrote there is “substantial evidence” supporting the Planning Commission’s finding “that safety will be improved by the lift upgrades.” He mentioned testimony addressing increased safety, including comments by Ted Ligety, a Winter Olympic skiing champion who hails from Park City.
Mayor Ryan Dickey thanked the Planning Commission and staffers in the Planning Department for the work.
“As we look to the future, investments like these are essential to delivering a world-class recreation experience in Park City for locals and visitors alike,” Dickey said in a statement, indicating he wants to “work cooperatively” with the mountain resort and other unspecified partners.
Park City Mountain sees the upgrades as modernizing the resort’s infrastructure and improving the guest experience with better circulation and reduced congestion on the slopes. Wait times would be reduced as well, the resort has indicated.
The Park Record was unable to immediately contact a representative of the individuals who filed the appeal. The next possible step for the group would be litigation in Third District Court.