Deer Valley was scheduled to discuss a public financing proposal with the Park City Council Thursday. But the resort withdrew from talks a little more than 24 hours before the meeting.
A Deer Valley spokesperson said the decision to withdraw reflects the resort’s “commitment to listening to the community and collaborating to explore all viable options.”
KPCW obtained the public comment about Deer Valley’s proposal through a public records request filed with Park City.
Residents sent over 40 letters to City Hall. Nearly all called on the city council to reject the resort’s proposal.
Many public comments cited private equity ownership as a reason to deny any taxpayer funding towards the project. One resident wrote that it's the equivalent of a National Football League owner asking for taxpayer money to build a new stadium. Several others called it a “money grab” and cited concerns about the proposal’s impact on local taxing entities, including Summit County and the Park City School District.
The presentation Deer Valley had prepared for the council, which has since been removed from the agenda, detailed the resort’s plans for public-private partnership to transform Snow Park through a redevelopment project expected to cost over $1.5 billion.
A slide in the presentation says: “Due to the significant upfront infrastructure costs, to construct the multi-modal transit center and underground public parking garage, we cannot deliver the village without a robust, multi-pronged public private partnership.”
In 2017 Deer Valley was acquired by Alterra Mountain Company, the distributor of the Ikon Pass and owner of 19 ski resorts across the continent, including the newly purchased Arapahoe Basin in Colorado.
Alterra is jointly owned by private equity firm KSL Capital Partners and Henry Crown & Company, the owners of Aspen/Snowmass.
The city council was scheduled to discuss two public financing tools Thursday. One is a public infrastructure district, also known as a PID. The other is a community reinvestment agency, referred to as a CRA.
“The PID does not require any city tax dollars,” Park City Budget and Strategic Planning Director Jed Briggs said. “The CRA or the community reinvestment project area would require future property tax dollars that are created and generated by the development itself. So it wouldn’t be taking any tax dollars outside of the area from other residents or businesses or anything like that.”
A letter of intent approved by the city council last year includes allowing Deer Valley to establish a PID to finance public infrastructure. Public infrastructure districts can issue bonds that are repaid through property taxes or assessments on the properties within the project area, which in this case is the Snow Park parking lots.
The request for a CRA is a new proposal. Community reinvestment agencies, which are used in cities throughout the country to encourage development, are funded by a program called tax increment financing. Tax increment financing is additional property tax revenue that comes from increases in property values within the project area.
“You have different taxing entities, you have Summit County, you have the school district, you have the city,” Briggs said. “So all of those new taxes could, in theory, go back into the CRA and help to kind of develop that area. And what’s being requested is to take 80% of those new taxes and reinvest that back into the area.”
According to Deer Valley’s presentation, that 80% tax diversion would run for 25 years. Briggs said Park City doesn’t hold all the power, as the ski resort would have to get approval from each separate taxing entity to fund the reinvestment agency.
It’s unclear if the proposal from Deer Valley will stay the same or change going into the future.
A future meeting with the city council has not been scheduled, but the Deer Valley spokesperson said the resort remains “dedicated to engaging with community stakeholders and Park City officials in the weeks and months ahead.”
