The ongoing battle between two of the giants of North American skiing, Powdr Corporation and Vail Resorts, over Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) has been ratcheted up another notch.
Vail Resorts are attempting to evict Powdr, who have run Park City Mountain Resort for the past two decades, because of a legal technicality over their lease, which Vail Resorts took over for their landlords less than a year ago. Judges have ruled in Vail Resorts’ favour but now Powdr have outlined their plans if forced to quit the site, and the potential damage to the local and Utah economy as they see it.
Powdr says removing them from PCMR will be “catastrophic” for the local economy and that it would spend $4 million over 33 weeks to remove 12 chairlifts, all snowmaking and maintenance equipment over a seven month period.
While Powdr would be evicted from the upper mountain by Vail, it says it would continue to operate at the bottom of the mountain next to the resort on land it owns alright. It will continue to operate three ski lifts, albeit on realigned routes at the base.
At the same time Powdr would continue its appeal against the eviction and if ultimately successful it would spend another $7.3 million reinstalling the chairlifts.
Although it has not specifically said so Vail Resorts control of the land PCMR occupies would allow it to extend its neighbouring Canyons ski area and make it the largest in the US, and second to Whistler in North America.
Powdr say their eviction would result in the loss of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars that PCMR contributed to the Utah tourism economy will also be lost or threatened. This was based in a quarter of the existing CMR visits from outside Utah being lost.
However Powdr say they will not allow Vail to buy their base buildings and lift, meaning customers would only be able to access Canyons from outside the centre of Park City.
The lawyer representing Vail said the Powdr case contained “inflammatory rhetoric” and urged Powdr not to block skiers from accessing the land Vail had evicted it from once Vail was operating it. He described Powdr’s statement as either “…a crude negotiating tactic or pure spite.”
