Mountain Land Development Services

05/15/2013

Salt Lake County Service Area 3, a public agency, received Conditional Use approval today from the Salt Lake County Planning Commission for their new building at the Wasatch Drain Tunnel. They previously received preliminary plat approval for the property they are purchasing for the building. All avalanche and geotechnical reports have been completed. Design is underway, with construction planned to start in July.

11/14/2012

Mountain Land Development secured 2 Planning Commission approvals today: Preliminary plat approval for a new 7-lot clustered single family subdivision at Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort that includes a whopping 133-acre Open Space parcel; and approval for a new small parcel for Service Area No. 3 to construct their new office/shop adjacent to the Wasatch Drain Tunnel. The Drain Tunnel is an award-winning project that uses abandoned mine tunnels to store 35M gals water for Snowbird and the Town of Alta, and also houses a water treatment plant that removes high metals concentrations to culinary drinking water standards. The building will have some innovative features such as circulating the tunnel air (steady 43F year-round) for heating & cooling and LEEDs level design. Still alot of work to do on both projects, but the big step in entitlements has been taken!

09/01/2012

Mountain Land Development Services is now contracted with Salt Lake County Service Area No. 3 to assist the District with land use permitting & entitlement services for a new building that will house their offices and shop. Service Area No. 3 is an agency that provides water & sewer service to residents of Little Cottonwood Canyon and Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort.

Lots of interesting aspects to this project. For example, their primary water source is the Wasatch Drain Tunnel, a mining-era bore that reaches far back under the Wasatch mountains. Pretty exciting stuff... if you happen to be a geologist.

05/17/2012

Snowbird's Coaster, which has been relocated to the Peruvian lift area, received unanimous approval today from the Salt Lake County Planning Commission. The Planning Commission toured the new project site and heard testimony that the development is a low-impact, accessible use concentrated within the resort's existing developed base area.
Mountain Land Development Services assisted Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort with the 18-month zoning application process, which included a modification to the FCOZ land use ordinance to protect the resorts' historical rights to provide summer recreational uses.
Testimony from members of the Wasatch Adaptive Sports Community, hosted at Snowbird, was especially powerful today. I am fortunate and grateful to have a client who's mission includes donating facilities and providing deeply meaningful mountain experiences for wounded veterans and disabled athletes!!

03/27/2012

And so it begins: Salt Lake County begins the process of revising FCOZ and land use plans guiding the Wasatch front canyons.

West Valley City • For a panel discussion on the complex topic of revising a Salt Lake County ordinance governing private land uses in the canyons, moderator Ken Verdoia brought out some balls and started juggling. His point: To keep the act going, it’s important to keep an eye on all of the balls.

03/01/2012

Salt Lake County Council navigated its way thru the morass to uphold the resorts' rights for summer uses, clearing the way for Snowbird to build its coaster (next to the Peruvian lift, NOT across the road!). Save Our Canyons may never be happy as long as there are commercial resorts in the canyons, but we worked diligently with SL City Public Utilities (watershed), SL County Planning, and several Council members to craft a narrowly-focused tweak that will - in spite of what the article says- for now stave off new resort proposals. Also, I personally have requested the County defer any discussion of SkiLink and other interconnect proposals into the on-going Mountain Transportation Corridor Study, where they can be addressed as part of an overall stakeholder-driven transportation/transit framework. That is the best place for that discussion... and should help alleviate concerns.

Snowbird is poised to get the mountain coaster it wants to bolster summer business. The Little Cottonwood Canyon resort will be able to restart the process of seeking a permit for a coaster — planned now for private land next to the Peruvian Express chairlift rather than the lower face of Mount Supe...

03/01/2012

The Hampton Inn and Suites held a Grand Opening and ribbon-cutting event last night. Its a beautiful hotel, and I hope you will encourage your family and friends visiting Salt Lake City to stay there.

01/17/2012

01/17/2012

The Hampton Inn & Suites will officially open for business tomorrow, Wed Jan 18, 2012. They expect to be immediately 100% fully booked for Outdoor Retailer- what a great way to open!! Its a beautiful hotel, beautifully finished. Congratulations to ownership & management, and thanks everyone for your support!!

12/15/2011

Salt Lake County Planning Commission recommends approval of minor changes to FCOZ, to clarify that summer uses at ski resorts are, in fact, legal. After 40 years of summer recreation including hiking trails, mountain biking, frisbee golf, concerts, Oktoberfest, bike racing, etc (during which water quality has continually improved) it would have been tough to legislate otherwise. The resorts will continue to offer diverse outdoor summer recreation activities for us to enjoy (and there is still 450,000 acres of pure wilderness, as well).

This parallels the decision (unanimously approved by the entire US Congress and signed into law last month by President Obama) modifying the ski resort Special Use Permit legislation to allow ski resorts to offer summer recreational uses. Because this will likely concentrate a higher percentage of the recreating public onto sites/resorts with existing infrastructure and manpower to manage the effects of recreational uses, this will likely save alot of wear & tear on our other public lands. So the net effect should be quite positive.

11/01/2011

The Scenic Motel sign was taken down yesterday after we lost the fight to move refurbish the sign with new lettering. Can't agree with the SL City Planning Commission on this one. We'd have loved to give the sign a facelift & a new hotel to represent!

10/24/2011

Congress finally updates a 35-year old piece of legislation under which ski resorts may operate on USFS lands. That was written when snowboarding was a gleam in few eyes, most ski resorts weren't of legal drinking age, and skiing - including backcountry and sidecountry- had far fewer afficionados than it does today. The County is completing their code modifications, to mimic Congresses update. Its important to acknowledge that summer recreation at the developed mountain resorts facilitates the ever-increasing levels of recreation on our public and private lands, localizing them to managed areas where the impacts can be mitigated- rather than dispersing those impacts out into surrounding pristine areas.

One would think Save Our Canyons Executive Director Carl Fisher would hate what Congress decreed last week about ski resorts. But he doesn’t. Even though lawmakers deemed ski areas to be economically important four-season developments, they hardly gave the resorts carte blanche to build whatever th...