Dispute could keep Park City lifts idle
By Jack Healy, New York Times
PARK CITY — Can a ski town survive if the ski lifts stop running?
The question is gripping this mountain town where celebrities gather each winter for the Sundance Film Festival and summer days glide by as placidly as kayakers on the nearby reservoir. Beneath the calm veneer, a ski resort’s eviction battle over land, leases and millions of dollars has erupted into a full-on civic crisis.
Businesses and town leaders worry that the festering dispute could, in the worst case, end up shuttering one of Utah’s most popular ski resorts for this winter, crippling a tourist economy that needs the chair lifts to run. Instead, those lifts could be uprooted from the mountains.
“Park City prides itself on its comity,” said Myles Rademan, a longtime resident and former town official who carried the Olympic torch when the Winter Games were held in Utah in 2002. “We worked hard to build our reputation as a place that gets along. This is all kind of a shock to our system.”
The dispute centers on the Park City Mountain Resort, a popular ski mountain in the heart of town whose lifts practically whisk visitors from Main Street to the slopes. It provides more than 1,200 jobs, draws thousands of skiers and tourists, and is an anchor of Park City’s postcard-perfect downtown.
For years, the resort had a lease that would make even a rent-controlled tenant in Manhattan jealous. While the proprietors owned the parking lots and much of the land at the base of the mountain, they leased the actual ski slopes, paying $155,000 a year for 2,800 acres of prime downhill terrain. It was an almost unimaginable bargain in a town where an unfinished house lot is on the market for $1.9 million.
But in 2011, the Powdr Corporation, which runs Park City Mountain, made what the Salt Lake Tribune called “one of the most monumental blunders in Utah business history”: It failed to renew the lease on time.
Yawn
This is what happens when resorts are run by vulture capitalist and hedge fund managers instead of people who actually ski. Both of these companies have strong ties to Wall Street, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that they’re willing to screw skiers and riders and put their own egos and financial profit first.
It is unbelievable how much recreation occupies our collective attention. Looking at the last few years, skiing has become increasingly expensive considering transportation, upscale lodging, 15 dollar burgers etc etc that it is obviously affecting the customer base negatively.
There will not be enough 1 percenters to support the business if the middle class people continue to dwindle.
The largess that the Boomers enjoyed is a bubble which will burst just like sub prime mortgages, and fewer dollars will be available for luxury activities.
I figure Vail is big enough to prevail here, and the sufferers will be those in Park city whose daily business will be possibly wiped out. Powdr Corp is no better, given that they sat on a world class deal and were not bright enough to have a management system that would have prevented this. Maybe they need to go.
Diplomacy and conciliation is needed, and the hedge fund types are not of that ilk.
It won’t be fun to watch.
If they were dumb enough to let the sweetheart lease lapse then they deserve to be put out of business. Life’s tough, tougher when you’re stupid.
Mel: Are you saying the city should be put out of business because they lost the lease of their old offices? It only cost us 1.5 million dollars to move to the airport.
Buck, would it cost YOU 1.5 million to move a mile away? Nope. We’d have surely been better off if the city WAS put out of business when they lost their lease. But the city didn’t lose their lease because they ‘forgot’ to renew.
So the question doesn’t hold water anyway.
Observer, some good comments from you on two counts. Yes, infrastructure needs a MAJOR over haul in this town. The cracks on my street aint gettin’ any smaller and the beginning of potholes are forming. STPUD needs a revamp and we need new sewer and water lines. The commercial properties along 50 need to be more attractive thereby creating more sales tax and hopefully more TOT,(paint, seel coating the parking lots, a facade to update and perhaps give the place a “mountain feel”.
Your other comment about ski areas was spot on. They’re pricing themselves out of existence. Wages are stagnat in the real world, yet the price for a lift ticket or a burger at Heavenly keep going up. I see the ski areas as losing clientel just as our stateline casinos are losing customers.
Good observrations, observer. OLS
What kind of idiot would like to replace SLT City Gov’t with ElDo County teabag morons? Better off?-what a joke
Vail is the worst thing to happen to skiing and snowboarding. All they care about is their bottom line all while destroying the communities that support their…purchases, while paying crap wages to their work force. They are the Walmart of the industry.
Vail is part of the New Corporatist structure … The New Fascists – all sorts of crony activities going down for them.
I agree, terrible company as with so many of the Large corporations, insurance companies and banks today.
In bed with Team Obama!
Some comments are so appropriate, and others are so silly. I agree with Observer. Excellent summary.
Or, It is all Obama”s fault, unless it is big government or big corporations, or “liberals”…
Good entertainment. Thank you all.
Dumbfounded, that is cj’s #1 response of all things on his idiot cheat sheet. He dosent want to have to think much beyone the foxnoise talking points. Lol
Muslim….Nazi….Socialist…..Fascist…..Communist. ….Anti-American…..Dictator
Is sad to see the rampant epidemic of tourette syndrome amongst right wing conservatives.
Racist. . . islamophobe. . . rightwingnut. . . teabag morons. . . bible-thumping intolerant homophobe. . .
Is sad to see the rampant epidemic of tourette syndrome amongst left wing liberals.
In your case-the shoe fits-wear it
level & Dog, good point the far right and far left, have moved way to far for middle america. And once you start name calling you lose your argument or at least your audience, which is the same thing.
Once again dog had to use someone elses thread. No original thoughts…
Dawg there is a big difference between you calling someone a Nazi (no one here is a Nazi), and you being called an Islamophobe because you actually are Islamophobic. And transphobic and homophobic. And I’m sure you’ve said some disgusting things about immigrants. Anyone is xxx-phobic is ignorant; irrational fear can only come from ignorance. Did you read any of the racist stuff coming from your fellow conservatives here last week? Interesting how most bigots are conservatives.
Stop whining or do something about your ignorance.
I rest my case.