After three years of legal wrangling, the Utah Court of Appeals has doused Park City Mountain’s 2022 plan to replace two lifts on the ski area’s Mountain Village side.
In an opinion issued Thursday, the court agreed with a lower court ruling that the proposal was inconsistent with the resort’s 1998 development agreement. That means the project could not be granted an expedited conditional-use permit and could be questioned by the Park City Planning Commission.
The planning commission had questioned whether the Park City Mountain and its owner/operator Vail Resorts, Inc., accurately determined its Comfortable Carrying Capacity and the parking the resort would need to provide to accommodate the users of the two lifts that it sought to update.
The resort will continue to seek approval for upgrades to its Eagle and Silverlode lifts, according to a statement Thursday from Deirdra Walsh, Park City Mountain’s vice president and COO.
“We are disappointed by today’s decision, especially after we initially received approval for these lifts after months of work with City staff and community input,” Walsh said. “Regardless of this outcome, we will resubmit permit applications for both lifts.”
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Parts for building a new Eagle lift at Park City Mountain Resort lie scattered around the resorts parking lot, Thursday, July 7, 2022. Residents last month blocked the resort from being able to install the lift because of discrepancies in resort capacities by two firms.
Comfortable Carrying Capacity is the number of skiers a resort can comfortably handle on its 10th busiest day. It is more of a guideline than an edict, but the formula for calculating it is proprietary.
When Park City residents appealed the conditional-use permit issued for the lifts, they said Park City Mountain strayed from its original development agreement in two ways: The alignment of the Eagle lift was significantly different and there were discrepancies in the tallies.
Members of the planning commission asked Park City Mountain to reveal the formula, which it declined to do. Its representatives noted that they were required to devise a parking mitigation plan to obtain the expedited administrative approval.
If resorts are required to reveal their capacities, it could impact ski areas and their communities nationwide.
“This has statewide and national implications,” Angela Moschetta, one of four Park City residents who originally fought for a closer look at Park City Mountain’s calculations, said in an emailed statement to The Salt Lake Tribune. “From Park City to the Cottonwoods, capacity enforcement could instantly reduce gridlock, shrink lift lines, and even eliminate the rationale for costly mega-projects like the billion-dollar Little Cottonwood gondola.
“CCC is the most powerful traffic management tool mountain towns already have. The courts have confirmed it. Now it’s up to elected leaders to decide if they’ll use it.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Long lines form at the First Time lift at Park City Mountain Resort on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, during an ongoing strike by ski patrollers with Vail Resorts.
After the citizens challenged the use of the expedited permit process, the commission voted 3-1 in July 2022 to uphold that appeal. Judge Richard Mrazik of the Third District Court ruled in November 2023 to uphold that decision. Park City Mountain appealed that decision and a panel of panel of judges from the state court of appeals heard arguments in the case in April.
The city did not comment on whether review of the capacity calculations would be necessary for the approval of the lifts going forward.
“The Utah Court of Appeals thoroughly reviewed and upheld the Planning Commission’s decision,” Park City spokesperson Clayton Scrivner said in an emailed statement. “We appreciate the Court’s thoughtful consideration and the important work of our volunteer Planning Commissions past and present.”
Walsh noted in her statement that Park City Mountain has invested $144 million “in resort improvements to date” and has made efforts to tame traffic around the Mountain Village. That includes requiring reservations and encouraging carpooling.
“Despite the City’s decision to revoke the Eagle and Silverlode permit,” she said, “we successfully implemented the 2022 parking plan, which, as we expected, has resulted in significant and measurable improvements to the arrival and departure experience at the resort.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Skiers ride the Park City Mountain Cabriolet Ski Lift near the Canyons Village in Park City on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024.
Park City Mountain has not attempted to install or upgrade any lifts out of its Mountain Village base since litigation began. It is, however, replacing the Sunrise chairlift with a 10-person gondola of the same name out of its Canyons Village base. It is also considering replacing the Cabriolet lift that shuttles visitors between that base and the parking area with a gondola.
Canyons Village is not within the Park City limits. Its developments are overseen by the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission.
Correction: Aug. 28, 2025, 4:15 p.m. • The Utah Court of Appeals issued the opinion. The court was misidentified in an earlier version of this article.