A Prospector resident who was previously part of a group that challenged lift upgrades at Park City Mountain is seeking a judicial review of the approval.
Alan Theis filed a petition in Third District Court over the approved upgrades to the resort’s Silverlode and Eagle lifts. The Park City municipal government is the defendant.
Park City Mountain intends 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 Park City Planning Commission in late May approved the upgrades. That approval triggered an appeal by six individuals, including Theis. The municipal hearing officer who officiated the appeal, Tim Pack, ruled in favor of the improvements in late July.
Theis’ filing asks the court to reverse the lift approvals. If that does not happen, the petition asks for the approvals to be remanded “with instructions for the Planning Commission to consider and mitigate all reasonably anticipated detrimental effects.” It wants the Planning Commission in that scenario to consider certain data points related to the resort’s comfortable carrying capacity, an industry metric sometimes referred to as CCC, which measures the size of crowds a resort can accommodate. The data points include:
- “The pre-project and post-project CCC for each affected lift.”
- “The data underlying the CCC calculations for independent verification by the Planning Commission.”
- “An updated resort-wide CCC table demonstrating that the aggregate of all individual lift and trail CCCs does not exceed the resort-wide ceiling” that was established in a Mountain Upgrade Plan for the resort.
- And, “if the ceiling is to be raised, identification of the public process by which” a 1990s-era development agreement governing growth on the Park City side of the resort would be amended.
The court document says Theis has skied at Park City Mountain for years and has held a pass sold by resort owner Vail Resorts. It says Theis was “involved in a ski collision that required extensive hospitalization and surgery.”
It describes the argument in the appeal itself, saying that the people who filed the appeal argued “that if uphill capacity increased at the already overcrowded Resort, and the downhill terrain remains the same, this would result in an increased number of active skiers on the downhill trails. It is the increased number of active skiers on the downhill trails that would increase safety risks. Put another way, if the lift upgrades increase circulation by more than 15% and 20% on each lift, this means that skiers who would otherwise be waiting in line at the bottom of the lift would instead become active skiers on the trails.”
The petition is the latest move in a dispute about the upgrades dating to 2022. There were early questions about procedural matters centered on the municipal review process the upgrades would go through. There was later a community split about the improvements, with supporters saying the upgrades would better manage the crowds on the slopes and critics expressing worries about the potential impacts of additional traffic, parking issues and larger crowds.
The Park City municipal government had not been served with the petition by Monday afternoon and declined to comment.
A Park City Mountain spokesperson issued a statement that did not directly address the Theis petition.
The statement said: “The Hearing Officer’s decision affirms what the Planning Commission concluded unanimously in May: these projects meet the appropriate requirements and will make the mountain better for the people who ski and ride it. We’re grateful to the city staff and commissioners who gave this a thorough review, and to the many community members who spoke up in support.”
An attorney for Theis declined to comment.