Cache County approves Utah ski area’s master plan, awaits a financial windfall

Powder Mountain has a master plan. Cache County has a cash cow.

For 14 months and over the course of six meetings, Cache County Planning Commissioners have been mulling the development roadmap for the Reed Hastings-owned ski and snowboard resort near Eden. They finally approved it in a quick and unanimous decision Thursday night, albeit with 10 conditions and two conclusions.

“I don’t want the public to think that we’re not thoughtful,” commissioner Val Jay Rigby said prior to the vote, “but we’ve spent a year on it, so I’m ready.”

The 1,100-page plan includes a map detailing where resort developers would one day like to build lifts, hotels, cabins and other amenities. That includes a lift into the backcountry area called Don’t Mention It, or DMI, which resort officials have said will be public and which could be built within the next two seasons. Most of the five other future lifts mapped in the plan are expected to be open only to Powder Haven homeowners and their guests.

Two hotels are also eventually planned for the resort, which is the largest in the United States with 12,850 skiable acres. The first phase of development includes a hotel near the Timberline Lodge, the top-down ski area’s most central base.

The master plan shows the many ways Powder Mountain wants to grow and could streamline the permitting process. However, as pointed out by Brooke Hontz, Powder’s chief development and construction officer, it does not green-light those projects.

“What tonight does is not approve the project once and for all,” she told the commission. “It establishes the framework for which you would see us in the future. So, subdivisions are going to be held up to this master plan to ensure that we’re, in fact, doing what we said we would do.

“So, essentially, unfortunately, this is just the beginning,” she added.

But the approval of the master plan is the beginning of a lucrative revenue stream for Cache County.

The majority of Powder Mountain is located in Weber County. Only the backside of the resort is located within Cache County. And that area is not now — nor will it be, Hontz said — accessible by public roads. That means the county will reap the permitting fees and property taxes from construction without having to foot the bill for development-related expenses such as road maintenance or emergency services. The two counties have been working on an interlocal agreement to cover those and other services.

As a result, according to a fiscal impact study conducted by an independent third party, Cache County could collect between $5 million and $7 million annually from the development at full buildout.

“In today’s terms,” Hontz told the commission, “that’s about 7% of your budget for the entire county.”

A full buildout would include up to 225 single family lots, 65 cabins, 415 multi-family residences and six corporate retreats, according to a county report.

In previous meetings, the commission balked at the ambiguity around public access to the resort. Under Hastings, Powder Mountain has embarked on a novel business model in which it keeps some lifts private as a perk for purchasers of homes in the luxury Powder Haven enclave. Critics of the resort have said that policy goes against the county’s Resort Recreation zoning designation, under which — as of earlier this year — all of the resort now falls.

A post on the website SavePowderMountain.com notes that the zoning code defines a recreational facility as a place “that is operated as a business and/or open to the general public” and that it may include lodging “for the general public utilizing the associated recreational facility.”

“A ski area that is open only to homeowners cannot be a ‘recreational facility’ under this definition,” the post continues. “Even though the phrase ‘and/or’ appears in the code, it doesn’t erase the rest of the language — every part of the definition assumes the general public is included.”

County planning manager Angie Zetterquist told the commission that her staff conferred with an outside consultant on that matter. They determined, she said, that Powder Mountain’s master plan conforms with the Resort Recreation zoning.

Early in its review of the plan, the commission had asked for guarantees that the resort would — outside of ski season — allow the public access to what will eventually be a 9-mile hiking trail through an open-air art museum. Hontz told The Salt Lake Tribune that the commission later dropped that request. The art trail is curated by the nonprofit Powder Art Foundation, which has committed to keeping it public.

The commission did ask for 10 other provisions, however.

Powder Mountain will be required to conduct a traffic impact study once it has built more than 1,400 units across both counties. It will have to work with Cache County to create development and infrastructure standards that will have to be approved by both the county council and the planning commission. It will have to lock down interlocal agreements on emergency services.

And, it must be dark-sky compliant.

Hontz said that with the approval of the master plan, Powder Mountain operators should no longer have to ask the county to fast-track permits for lifts or other amenities. The resort has asked the county for expedited approval of three lift projects over the past two years. Hontz said it plans to ask for permits to build yet another lift, to DMI, this summer.

Ashton Stronks, a spokesperson for Powder Mountain, said the master plan allows the resort to be more transparent about its vision for the future — a future in which, she said, it remains a public ski area.

“It’s that bit of power we need to keep the kind of conversation going and be able to share more publicly what we have down the line,” she said, “but with the intention of keeping Powder a public ski resort.”