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OGDEN - Powder Mountain's owners proposed an even bigger destination resort - with 1,800 more acres comprising mostly open space - and promised Weber County to drop an incorporation bid if the county agrees to a development agreement.
Residents of the Ogden Valley who packed a public hearing on Powder Mountain's proposed rezoning largely panned the plan, saying a resort with 3,950 dwelling and hotel units is too dense for the mountain and would overburden the steep, narrow state road leading to the resort.
The commission took no action on the proposed agreement for the resort, 6,000 acres of which would be in Weber County.
"It feels a little bit like a hammer over our heads," said Sharon Holmstrom, a former Ogden Valley Planning Commission member who urged the commission to let the valley's general plan guide its decision.
If the county changes zoning to let Powder Mountain build thousands of units, the developers should kick in big money for open space preservation on the valley floor, as the general plan prescribes, she said. "If we give away density . . . we'll have to do the same thing with Snowbasin and Wolf Mountain."
Powder Mountain Project Manager Brooke Hontz rejected as unfair the assertion by some that the resort is using incorporation to blackmail the county into approving the project. "It's simply not true," she said after the meeting. "We were asked to come back by the county and now we're being chastised."
Powder Mountain filed a petition to incorporate in January under a short-lived law that the Legislature passed in 2007 and reversed last winter after an outcry from residents targeted for inclusion in new developers' towns.
Commissioner Craig Dearden in March asked Powder Mountain's owners to delay incorporation and to keep working with Weber County.
The president of the Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce and a representative of Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey urged the commission to let Powder Mountain develop, but Kirk Langford, of Eden, said the project is too big and will lead to congestion and pollution that will hurt Ogden's attempt to be seen as an outdoors destination.
"It's one thing to rebrand, but you also have to walk the walk after you talk the talk," Langford said.