Drivers heading past Canyons Village in recent months may have seen a new apartment complex springing out of the ground.
It’s a workforce housing project that’s been planned for nearly 25 years. When it’s finished, as soon as a year from now, it will have at least 1,107 beds. And workers at the Canyons Village base area will have the first chance to sign up.
On Monday, Park City Mountain Resort-owner Vail Resorts announced it signed a lease with the firm that’s developing the project, Columbus Pacific Development. The resort’s Communications Manager Emily McDonald said the deal reserves 441 beds for Vail employees, and the accommodations will be ready in time for next ski season.
“It's a really big deal,” McDonald said. “... The Park City housing market has been incredibly challenging. As I said earlier, the past few years, we have been actively looking for opportunities to provide housing for our employees.”
McDonald said PCMR has been unable to secure those housing arrangements, which she said could have entailed leasing blocks of rooms in existing buildings. She said the resort knows the community wants it to do more to house its employees and suggested that this deal that provides housing for nearly 500 people is significant. Tenants will still pay rent, but the amount has not yet been set.
Columbus Pacific’s Tony Tyler said there are seven buildings in the overall complex. More than half of the bedrooms are to be ready for move-in by this fall, and the rest are to be finished over the course of next winter.
“We're super excited about the project, and I think this master lease is a little bit of a proof of concept for us as well,” Tyler said. “We're quite happy with the configuration, with the partnerships in the community, with our relationship with Summit County and the CVMA. Really couldn't couldn't be much happier with it.”
The “CVMA” that Tyler mentioned is the Canyons Village Management Association, the organization that has overseen the development of the base area over the last 20 years.
Its CEO, Brian Madacsi, praised the deal and said he expected there would be a waiting list for employees looking to live in the new apartments.
Plans call for a mix of housing units, including lock-off bedrooms with shared common areas. Tyler said the project could flex to accommodate more than 1,300 people just by changing the furniture. But he said there would not be any bunk beds on site.
Tyler said the cost of rent will vary based on the type of housing, with those who opt to live in a private one-bedroom apartment paying more than those living in a dorm-style configuration.
There are a series of what are known as “waterfall provisions” that detail who can live there, according to a 2018 master agreement. First in line are Canyons Village employees who make less than 80% of the area’s median income, which in 2021 equaled about $67,000.
There are eight tiers of restrictions that aim to reserve the housing for people who work in or near Canyons Village.
Summit County owns the land underneath the buildings, which it purchased with a special assessment levied on landowners in the Canyons area. Tyler pointed to the public-private partnership and the way the rooms are arranged as elements that set this project apart.
“This is a new project of its kind and hasn't really been done before in a resort environment. And it's a unique configuration even for this type of project,” Tyler said. “So, it's a little bit of a leap.”
Tyler said rents would be announced this summer when applications open for prospective tenants.
