Things are heating up in the Wasatch, and I ain’t talking about the weather! You may recall the recent legal battle between Powdr Corp., owners of Park City Mountain Resort, and Vail Resorts, who took over the battle from Talisker Corp., the owners of most of the land PCMR sits on. Crazy.
A Utah District court finally reached a ruling yesterday that says Powdr Corp. “failed to renew their historic lease for a majority of their ski terrain and the landowner [Talisker Corp.] is allowed to lease the ski area’s upper terrain to a new operator” aka Vail Resorts. To put it simply, Powdr Corp. still owns the base area, meaning the parking lots and buildings and things, while Vail in now in charge of the upper two-thirds of PCMR, or essentially all the runs and land above the base.
Now that you have a grasp on the facts, allow me to offer my own humble opinions on the matter… I think this whole thing is INSANE! For starters, all this nonsense came about because apparently someone at Powdr Corp. FORGOT TO RENEW THE LAND LEASE. Are you kidding me!? With mutli-millions of dollars on the line, not to mention the fact that Park City is arguably Utah’s biggest tourist attraction, how does something as important as the land you operate on simply fall through the cracks like that? Especially since they were reportedly paying only $150,000 a year to lease the land. That is INSANELY low for a ski area, especially when you compare it to something like the $25 million a year PLUS a percentage of revenue that Vail Resorts pays Talisker to lease the 4,000 acres Canyons sits on.
What truly concerns me though, is that fact that Powdr chief John Cumming has stated that they have no intention of giving up the base area to Vail, and that they will do everything in their power to stop a Vail takeover. He even went so far as to say that they’d remove all the chairlifts if Vail won this lawsuit, because even though they are technically on Vail’s land now, the lifts themselves are Powdr’s property. What could be cool, is that Cumming said he might make the base area a full time Camp Woodward, which would be an awesome place, but probably be terrible for the winter operations of Park City Mountain Resort.
At the end of the day, I’m truly worried about whether or not Park City will open for the 2014/15 winter season. If this legal battle continues to rage on, and Powdr Corp. follows through with their threats to take out charlifts and not give up the base area to Vail, there is a legitimate chance that PCMR won’t even be able to open. I’m no economist, but it seems like closing such a large source of income for the state would be devastating to our economy, not to mention eliminate tons of jobs people were relying on for the winter season.
It appears we will have a very interesting few months ahead of us watching this play out before winter is here again. I for one can’t wait to get back on my snowboard, but I just hope I’ll be able to do so at Park City Mountain Resort. Cheers.
All my facts came from The Denver Post, so check out the article below for even further details:
Utah Court Gives Vail Access to Most of Park City Ski Area Terrain
