It’s been years in the making but today, some 20 years after a small military recreation hotel was torn down to make way for the 2002 Winter Olympics facilities at Snowbasin, a private developer has donated a nearly 5-acre parcel of property in Wasatch County on which he will build a new Military Conference Hotel at the base of Mayflower Mountain Resort.
The Extell company, doing business as EX Utah Development, donated just under 5 acres of property to MIDA – the Military Industrial Development Authority - for the new military conference hotel. The hotel will include 387 rooms, 55 private residences and 60,000 square feet of conference, food, and beverage facilities.
This is just one of several hotels, condominiums, estate lots, and retail planned for the thousands of acres located just off the Mayflower exit on U.S. 40 at the eastern edge of Deer Valley Resort.
With an long term lease agreement signed with Deer Valley Resort that allows Deer Valley continued use of leased ski terrain owned by Extell, Extell has secured its right to a direct lift connection from the base of the Mayflower ski beach to the top of Deer Valley’s Sultan chairlift.
Extell founder and chairman Gary Barnett, a New York based developer, started acquiring the Mayflower property in 2014. Since then, he has amassed some 6,800 acres, which is all now part of the MIDA project area. Working with MIDA, Extell has secured special tax increment financing to begin building the resort’s infrastructure. MIDA is an independent nonprofit, separate governmental body of the state of Utah. As an economic development entity, MIDA has certain municipal powers and can issue bonds and capture tax increment to build on underutilized sites.
Just last month, more than $68 million worth of assessment bonds were issued to Extell to begin building the resort infrastructure.
Under the MIDA terms, U.S. military personnel, active and retired, will have preferred rates at the conference hotel in perpetuity.
In a press release, Extell announced that the location for the new Conference Hotel foundation has been cleared and primary infrastructure has started on the roads, water, sewer, and storm drains. The company is well underway to completing a voluntary an environmental cleanup due to the former mining operations on site.
Ski lifts serving the Mayflower Village are scheduled to open the winter of 2023 and the projected opening of the Conference Hotel is in 2024.
https://vimeo.com/453361611">See the Mayflower Resort video here.
