Brighton • In 1964, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said he couldn’t define pornography, but “I know it when I see it.”
During the Brighton Town Council meeting Tuesday night, Brighton Mayor Dan Knopp noted he shares Stewart’s stance when it comes to determining the boundaries for Big Cottonwood Canyon’s two ski areas: Brighton Resort and Solitude Mountain Resort. He may not be able to cite the specific latitude and longitudes, he said, but “I know pretty much where Solitude is.”
And it is not, he said, on both sides of Big Cottonwood Canyon Road.
The rest of the council concurred. With a unanimous vote, it approved a municipal ordinance that sets the ski resort boundaries roughly along the lines of their Uinta-Wasatch-Cache Forest Service permits. At the same time, the council leveled a blow to Solitude’s plan to build a parking lot on an undeveloped parcel across the highway from Solitude Village.
Solitude had wanted its 12.5-acre parcel off of Old Stage Road to be included in the boundary map. That could have helped smooth the path to the lot’s approval. Without its inclusion, the ski area still has a path to building the lot, but with more red tape. It must first petition the council to add the parcel to the resort’s boundary. If that goes through, it can then seek a conditional use permit from the planning commission to build the lot.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Solitude Mountain Resort has requested a conditional use permit to build a 593-space parking lot in an aspen grove across SR-190 from the ski area's main village, pictured Tuesday, May 7, 2025.. The planned area, above center, has critics saying the lot will damage Salt Lake City's watershed, further snarl traffic in the canyon and be a visual blight. Solitude officials say it would help move parking off the roadside.
Solitude sought a conditional use permit for the lot early this year, but it was denied after the Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District — which oversees planning, zoning and development issues for the Town of Brighton — determined the request was void. Among other cited issues, the district said it was denied because the resort does not have a right of way across Salt Lake City watershed land between Old Stage Road to the property.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The boundaries approved by the council are essentially the same as the ones recommended by the Town of Brighton planning commission. The commission first took on the task of drawing the ski resort boundaries in July. After mulling various maps over the course of three meetings — including one proposed by Solitude that added the parking lot parcel — it settled on the current maps in October and unanimously approved sending them to the town council.
Speaking during the opening comments Tuesday, Amber Broadaway, Solitude’s president and chief operating officer, urged the council to not make a decision. Instead, she asked that the council meet with the resorts to work out a resolution. The resort has said it is seeking the lot as a way to eliminate parking along the highway, which it says causes safety and congestion issues.
“No matter if this measure passes or not,” she warned, “the issues we face do not go away with this vote.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Amber Broadaway, Solitude Mountain Resort's COO and president, in 2021.
Meanwhile Brighton’s general manager, Mike Doyle, seemed to be in support of the proposed boundaries However, he asked for clarity in the permitting process.
“Growth on contiguous land makes sense,” he said. He added, “If a conditional use permit is the path to that growth, let’s have that in our ordinance.”
Council member Lise Brunhart said the council received about 120 letters and emails on the issue. Of those, Knopp said the lion’s share were sent to him and they all supported the ordinance. The dozen members of the public who spoke at the meeting also voiced unanimous support for the maps as proposed.
(Town of Brighton Planning Commission) The area in red shows Solitude Mountain Resort's boundaries as proposed by the ski area's representatives to the Town of Brighton Planning Commission as of Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. The yellow is the rough town boundary. The area outlined in red on the right is the wooded lot where the resort wants to build a 593-space parking garage. It was left out of the final maps adopted by the Brighton Town Council on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Alan Sullivan, 79, was among those who attended the meeting at the Brighton fire station in person. Sullivan owns a cabin in Forest Glen, a community that sits along Guardsman Pass just above the planned parking lot, and said he has been skiing and hiking in the area for 70 years. Rather than help alleviate the traffic in Big Cottonwood Canyon, he said the parking lot would further ensnarl it.
Setting resort boundaries as part of the town’s master plan is a sensible way of keeping the resorts in check, he said.
“It means,” Sullivan said, “that Solitude would have to abide by the same rules that govern every other business in the canyon.”
Council member Carolyn Keigley served on the Big Cottonwood Community Council , the canyon’s governing body before Brighton’s incorporation, 15 years ago. She said the boundaries just adopted are the same ones acknowledged back then by the community council — and the two resorts. She said they are also the ones the public told officials they wanted when Brighton incorporated in 2018.
“We all together had this understanding of where the resorts were, and this ordinance matches that definition,” Keigley said. “I see this as not so much of a change, but more of helping to clarify the terms, clarifying the wording.
“There was never any misunderstanding of where the resort was.”
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