Park City Planning Commissioners were at an impasse last Wednesday after hearing a contentious appeal to its approval of Park City Mountain Resort’s plans to upgrade some chairlifts ahead of next season.
The resort wants to replace its Silverlode chair with an eight-pack lift and make the Eagle and Eaglet Lifts one six-person chair.
The four residents who filed the appeal say the resort’s comfortable carrying capacity, or CCC, will be exceeded by upgrading the lifts. A resort’s CCC is the optimum number of guests it can accommodate at any one time. The resort denies this, but both parties presented differing CCC calculations last week.
That disagreement ultimately led to no decision by planning commissioners last week.
City Planning Director Gretchen Milliken said the public hearing has been closed and commissioners will look to have their outstanding questions answered on Wednesday.
“The applicant will have the opportunity to answer those questions from the planning commission, the appellant will have an opportunity to respond to that, and then the planning commissioners will make a motion,” Milliken said.
The original approval for the upgrades was granted by Milliken in April. Normally, chairlift upgrades would be voted on by the planning commission, but the development agreement the city signed with PCMR’s then-owners in 1998 states that lift upgrades that are covered by the resort’s mountain upgrade plan are subject to administrative approval.
Milliken said the commission will be looking for more clarity on the CCC calculations before making a decision on the appeal.
“There’s a lot of numbers out there," she said. "We’ve been looking at numbers from 1998 and current numbers. I think the planning commission wants to just be comfortable that we are actually under the max capacity for the CCC, which is 13,700 [people].”
If the planning commission upholds or rejects the appeal on Wednesday, that decision can still be challenged in district court.
Wednesday’s meeting starts at 5:30 pm at the Park City Council chambers at 445 Marsac Avenue and will also be streamed online. A link to the full agenda ishere.
