Leadership Park City hosted Deer Valley and Alterra Mountain Company Executives at Monday’s annual Community Leadership Lecture. The public got a glimpse into what might be in store for the resort in the coming years. KPCW’s Sean Higgins has more.
Deer Valley President Jeremy Levitt said although he took over at the helm of the resort amid the COVID-19 pandemic and on the eve of the most challenging winter in the resort’s history, he’s still eyeing ways to invest and improve the resort over the next five years.
As KPCW has reported, the resort has had preliminary talks with Park City Municipal staff about the future of the Snow Park base area.
Levitt said Snow Park is not the only capital improvement project they have their eyes on.
“Things that I think about, renovating the lodges, the three day lodges that we have,” said Levitt. “There are some other opportunities, the village at Snow Park. We are having internal discussions about what’s gonna happen there. We continue to engage in discussions with Mayflower, but all of this is to continue to invest back into the experience to make it better for the guests as well as our staff.”
Levitt stressed that any discussions about the Snow Park project have been largely conceptual thus far and added that transportation would be a key aspect of any future base development project -- including integration with a transit center and possible aerial transit system that has been studied by city government.
Although no timetable was offered, he said it would likely be some time before plans were finalized and construction began.
“We are in active discussions right now,” he said. “Obviously, an enormous project of significant scale so making sure that the planning gets done right, making sure that the arrival experience and the food and beverage experience and the hospitality experience that we can deliver. Really to deliver a base village that is worthy of Deer Valley, but there’s a lot of things that it’s contingent on and we’re not putting the shovel in the ground any time soon.”
Alterra Mountain Company, which acquired Deer Valley in 2017, was represented at the lecture by Chief Executive Officer Rusty Gergory.
Gregory addressed the company’s relationship with the Mayflower development to the east of Deer Valley along the Jordanelle Reservoir.
The possibility of a partnership between the forthcoming Mayflower Mountain Resort and Deer Valley has been hinted at in the past, given the proximity of the resorts and property boundaries near the base of the Mayflower chairlift.
Gregory said talks are ongoing between Deer Valley and Mayflower, but no agreements have been reached yet. He added the community will have a chance to see any future plans before changes are made.
“We’ve spent a lot of time with [resort developer] Extell,” said Gregory. “I’ve gotten to know [Extell founder] Gary Barnett quite well and we’re having discussions about what role Deer Valley can play in the ski terrain that is available, potentially, with adjacent Mayflower land and some terrain that is not offered today. Gary is very interested in that as well as the real estate at the bottom that he owns, so we’re having discussions on how we might be able to combine efforts and then once we do come up with some idea with it, that will be back in front of the community and we’ll see how the community feels about it.”
The Mayflower development is expected to break ground as early as later this spring.
