One month after an appeals court ruled that Park City Mountain’s plan to update two lifts was not in line with its master plan and would require approval of the Park City Planning Commission, owner Vail Resorts, Inc., indicated it has plans to move ahead with the lifts.
During its quarterly and fiscal-year earnings report Monday, CEO Rob Katz announced Vail Resorts’ plan to “re-submit for permits to replace the Eagle and Silverlode lifts.” If approved, Katz said, those two lifts near the Mountain Village base would be upgraded in time for the 2027-28 season.
On the subject of capital improvements, Katz also mentioned Park City Mountain’s plan to replace its Cabriolet lift serving the Canyons Village with a 10-person gondola. The Cabriolet will deliver guests between the base and the new, five-story, 1,800-space parking garage being built on the dirt lot near State Route 224.
The three Park City lifts accounted for the only lift projects proposed by Vail Resorts across its 42 resorts in the report. Other capital improvements mentioned in the call included renovations to the Lodge at Vail and upgrades to the My Epic app.
(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.
Park City Mountain originally obtained an administrative conditional use permit for the changes to the Eagle and Silverlode lifts in 2022. The resort wanted to upgrade Silverlode to an eight-seater, which at the time would have made it the only eight-pack in the Vail Resorts network and just the third in North America. The Eagle lift, as proposed, would become a six-seater but would follow a different alignment with a relocated top terminal.
A group of Park City citizens argued against the expedited approval because, they said, the plan did not meet two tenets of the 1998 master plan the resort had negotiated with the city. One concerned the changed alignment of the Eagle lift. The other was that, they believed, a discrepancy existed in the comfortable carrying capacity submitted by the resort and the one in the master plan. Comfortable carrying capacity is the measurement of how crowded a resort will be on its 10th busiest day.
The planning commission voted to deny the expedited permit. It also would not allow Park City Mountain to split the permit request so the Silverlode project could move forward. The resort filed an appeal, but in November 2023, a judge upheld the commission’s decision. Park City Mountain also appealed that verdict, but in August a panel of judges from the Utah Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Deirdre Walsh, new Vice President and COO of Park City Mountain Resort, is pictured on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2022, as she takes over for Mike Goar at a pivotal time for the ski area.
In a statement following the ruling, Deirdra Walsh, chief operating officer of Park City Mountain, said the resort was “disappointed” but did not consider the lifts dead.
“We will,” she said, “resubmit permit applications for both lifts.”