Industry News
This article is the first article in Civics for Skiers, a series which examines how the ski industry interacts with various parts of our government and how skiers may make their voices heard.
Development has always been a part of the ski industry. From the early days when big resorts used skiing as a way to sell real estate, to today where megapasses use expansion and upgrade projects to attract larger customer bases. Local governments, cities, towns, and counties play a pivotal role in regulating and approving development projects for ski areas and other developers. While large projects may seem inevitable, the local approval process offers opportunities for skiers, residents, and citizens to make their voices heard.
Many ski areas operate on U.S. Forest Service land through special use permits, but it is not uncommon for ski resort base areas to be on private land. Terrain expansions, chairlift upgrades, and other infrastructure projects that occur on National Forest land have to be reviewed and approved by the U.S. Forest Service and projects on private land have to seek similar approvals from local government, depending on where the ski area is located.
There are a few different players in a local government that deal with development projects that have varying levels of responsiveness to public opinion. At the top is a panel of decision makers called something like a city council, a county commission, or a board of supervisors. These members are elected and thus are directly accountable to the public, especially in the districts they represent. The council will give or deny final approval for the project, but relies on a planning commission to recommend projects to vote on.
Planning commissions are responsible for seeing if a project is a good idea. They can be made up of planners or other professionals with government experience, or engaged citizens, but they are appointed by the city or county council. According to the Institute for Local Government, planning commissions are “responsible for directing the short and long range growth and development of a jurisdiction through maintenance and implementation of the city’s or county’s general plan, associated specific plans, rules and regulations.” Planning commissions take public comment and testimony in relation to projects or decisions they are considering, but such input usually requires knowing about and showing up to a specific meeting where that item is being discussed. These public comments may influence decision making or open up new areas for staff planners to consider.
Planning commissions and city councils rely on staff planners and other professionals to build up an understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of a proposed project. These subject matter experts are tasked with the policy research that is required for prudent decision making by the planning commission and city or county council. Staff planners are public servants, but their role is to provide technical information and analysis about a project rather than represent the public. Some smaller city or county governments may have extremely limited planning staff, and may contract out the same work to consulting firms. But, public comments given at city council or planning commission meetings may influence the direction that policy research is taken in.
When a ski area proposes a development project, say, in its base area, to a local government, staff planners will study everything from traffic and housing impacts to noise and light pollution. Planning commissioners will use the results of those studies to recommend either approval or denial of the project to the city council, that ultimately votes on the project. Of course, it’s never that simple, and some projects require many rounds of proposals, changes, negotiations, denials, and lawsuits before they are finally approved. It is through this approval process that the public can extract some public benefit from developers. Ideally, this means something along the lines of a ski area getting a brand new lodge and commercial spaces, and the community getting more workforce housing and expanded public transportation. Recent development projects at Deer Valley, Utah and Winter Park, Colorado illustrate how this process plays out.
Deer Valley Expanded Excellence
In August 2023, Deer Valley announced Expanded Excellence, one of the largest development projects to ever be proposed in the ski industry. The project would more than double the skiable acres at Deer Valley, add up to 16 new chairlifts, and develop new base areas at the East Village and Snow Park. The East Village project is being pursued by Extell, a New York based development corporation and Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority, a quasi-governmental organization created by the state legislature in 2007. The Snow Park area is within Park City limits, thus, Park City is the local government that must approve any development projects in that area.
Ski areas and other development groups often propose giant projects all in one go, but approvals for them from local governments almost always occur stepwise, with many sequential aspects of the project being considered individually. One of the benefits of this seemingly drawn-out and tedious process is that developers must adhere to previously made agreements in order to continue receiving approvals. Individual approvals of various aspects of a project can often simplify negotiations between the city and the developer over public benefit items. The Snow Park base area has been no different in these regards.
One of the first aspects of the Snow Park Base Area Project that the Park City Council voted on was whether the city should vacate, or give up, the public roads in the Snow Park Area to make development possible. During negotiations over the vacation of these roads, Park City and Deer Valley both agreed to pay $15 million into a public-private fund to be used for transportation and housing projects in the area. This public-private partnership is an example of the kinds of public benefits that can come out of development projects like the Snow Park Base Area. Park City may have concerns over extra vehicle traffic associated with the new base area, and an expanded public transportation system would help alleviate some of the pressure. But, Deer Valley would be unlikely to just pay for all of the expanded bus service, so the town of Park City matches its money with public money. This is because Park City and Deer Valley both theoretically benefit from an expanded bus service.
The whole Snow Park Base Area project will be expensive, with estimates totaling more than $1.5 billion. The Park City Council recently voted on a proposal from Deer Valley to create a public infrastructure district, which would help finance the project. The public infrastructure district would allow Deer Valley to raise property taxes and assessments within the district area to help fund the development project. Deer Valley was also pursuing the creation of a community reinvestment agency, which would have used tax dollars from Park City, Summit County, and the Park City School District, but Deer Valley withdrew the proposal after the city received an overwhelming number of negative comments from the public. Though many residents of Park City are still unhappy with a private equity firm being able to raise property taxes in a limited area to help pay for its development project, public opposition and comment prevented more widespread taxation being used to fund the project.
With the necessary roads vacated, plans drawn up, and public help with project financing, Deer Valley sought approval for the first phase of the Snow Park Base Area project. As a relatively modest start, the first phase includes construction of a three story parking garage to replace the surface parking the project is eliminating. In February 2025, the Planning Commission approved phase 1, and ground was supposed to begin getting broken in May 2025, but the resort announced that it was unlikely to start construction this summer. Phase 2 of the project, which includes hotels, commercial spaces, and condos, has not been proposed yet.
Winter Park Unlocked
Alterra has large development plans in the works at another one of its resorts: Winter Park, Colorado. The Winter Park Unlocked project will include a vastly expanded base area including hotels, condos, and commercial spaces, as well as a gondola that will eventually connect the resort to the town of Winter Park. The first section of the gondola will be accompanied by a ski trail allowing skiers to ski back to town from the resort. Approvals for the base area development will come from the Town of Winter Park, but approvals for the terrain expansion plans will have to come from the U.S. Forest Service.
Plans for the base area development were first submitted to the town in July 2024. The town examined the development plans and made sure they were in alignment with the town’s broader vision for development, captured in the Town Comprehensive Plan. Master plans are written by local governments with extensive input for the public and can cover many decades in their scope. Beyond zoning for all the land parcels in that jurisdiction (like what kinds of things you can do with a specific piece of land), master plans often try to set out overarching themes for what projects will be needed or wanted in the future. Many ski areas are included in master plans with lofty goals to become a world-class year-round recreation destination. Planning commissions and city or town councils generally adhere to master plans that are currently in effect when considering new development projects.
The Winter Park Planning Commission reviewed the preliminary development plan and in April 2025 they recommended that the town council approve the project. In June 2025 the Winter Park Town Council passed an ordinance rezoning 165 acres for mixed-use resort development and approved a development agreement between Alterra and the Town of Winter Park. During the back-and-forth between Alterra, the Winter Park Town Planning Department and Town Council secured a commitment that three of the 34 parcels in the development area would be dedicated to workforce housing, a significant concern for Winter Park as for many ski towns. Similar to the Park City project, the local government was able to influence the scope of a development project to partially address one of its pressing issues.
But why is workforce housing a significant issue enough for the Town Council and the Planning Commission to go out of their way to forge agreements from Alterra and other developers? This may seem like a rather abstract question, but it gets right to the heart of representation in local government. A pessimistic view of the issue would be that the Town of Winter Park has a tax revenue based incentive to make sure that Winter Park Resort is successful and that success depends on having enough workers with adequate housing to effectively operate the resort. If the town feels that Alterra is not doing enough to ensure it has an adequate workforce with places to live, they can try to extract commitments from Alterra.
A more democratically optimistic view is that the people serving on the planning commission and the town council have heard from people in their constituencies (political speak for communities) that workforce housing is a really big deal and needs attention from the local government to make progress. These public servants may also recognize the value in a large-scale development project and try to extract commitments from Alterra and work towards solving a big problem for the community on the way to achieving their development goals. The first view is of a local government that looks more like an opaque corporate entity with its own goals and plans for the future, while the second view looks more like an outlet for the community to effectively interface with developers like Alterra or Vail or any other ski corporation to make their priorities heard. In reality, there is often a mixture of the two.
Is Local Politics Representative?
Local governments often struggle with critically low levels of public engagement. A 2016 study from Portland State University found that the median voter turnout for a mayoral election in the 30 largest cities in America was just 20%. The biggest predictor of election turnout by far was voter age, with voters over 65 fifteen times more likely to vote than voters aged 18 to 34. With voter turnout so low, it is hard to make the case that decision makers like city councils or county commissions are actually representative of the public.
Perhaps an even bigger problem is the almost complete absence of political competition in local elections. Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan nonprofit group focused on providing the public with accurate and objective information about politics, reported that in 2024 73% of all elections were uncontested, up from 61% in 2023. Another nonpartisan election information group, BallotReady, reported that in 2024, 82% of county races were uncontested, compared with 48% at the state level. A lack of political competition means that the public that does turn out to vote doesn’t actually get to make a choice at all. This has implications for the effectiveness of local governments because it seems that most elected officials do not actually face any political consequences for decisions they make while in office.
When local races are contested, your vote can have a big impact because of low voter turnout. In November 2024, just a few weeks after the general election, the Placer County Board of Supervisors voted to approve a massive 20 year development project at Palisades Tahoe, despite intense public opposition. Jim Holmes, the supervisor for District 3, had not sought reelection, and Anthony Demattei won out over Mike Murray by a margin of just 436 votes, or roughly one KT-22 lift line on a powder day. While public comment on development projects remains an important aspect of advocacy, running in and voting in local elections can be far more effective ways of getting your voice heard.
Related: The Battle Over The Future Of Palisades Tahoe
Moving the Needle
Ski area development is not going away anytime soon. Unfortunately, neither are traffic, housing, high cost of living, or the myriad of other problems facing ski towns today. Through development project approval processes, local governments have a chance to move the needle on some of these issues by urging developers to alter their plans or by extracting public benefits. Input from skiers through public comment on specific project proposals and general plans, as well as through local elections, helps keep local governments in touch with what the community needs alongside what the developer wants. As ski areas continue to grow, local governments and the citizens they represent help ensure that communities hosting ski areas also continue to grow and thrive.
More from Zach Armstrong:
- Why Ski Patrollers at Park City Initiated The Biggest Ski Patrol Strike In History
- Why is the Return of Rob Katz to Vail Resorts as CEO Such a Big Deal?
- The Idaho Supreme Court Could Change Ski Area Liability Law All Over Again
- Forest Service Budget Challenges Threaten Avalanche Center Operations Nationwide
- How Eldora, CO, Ski Patrollers Finally Got Their Union
