Ira Sachs, the adventurous and eccentric real estate developer who landed in Park City in the 1970s to ski and ended up opening one of its landmark hotels, has died.
Sachs died on Oct. 19, a week shy of his 86th birthday, his daughter Lynne Sachs confirmed. A cause of death was not disclosed, though he had been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a degenerative brain disease.
Born and raised in the South, Sachs first arrived in Park City in 1972, parking his Winnebago behind the old Utah Coal and Lumber Restaurant on Heber Avenue, and skiing the entire season. He moved to Park City permanently in 1983, until he retired to Florida later in his life.
Sachs told a Salt Lake Tribune reporter in 1979 that he fell in love with Utah skiing shortly after he arrived.
“I was skiing at Snowbird just after it opened,” he said. “I skied off a run and fell about 300 feet. I finally stopped near a girl who said, ‘I’m a Mormon and I prayed for you all the way down.’ I knew I had come to the right place then.”