Vail’s West Lionshead partnership touted in meeting with Park City officials, but with few details

It’s been a relatively quiet start of the year for the West Lionshead project that would revitalize a moribund part of town with new hotel rooms, a gondola connection to Vail Mountain and an undetermined amount of new housing and parking. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s happening.

Late last month, Leadership Park City — including a number of top officials at Vail’s rival ski town in Utah — got a sneak peek on how the planning process for West Lionshead has been proceeding, although several people who attended said the presentation was short on details. And that’s largely because nothing has been formally agreed to or presented to Vail Town Council.

The West Lionshead redevelopment is a partnership between the town of Vail, landowner Vail Resorts and development company East West Partners to revitalize an area of maintenance yards, strip malls and offices into a vibrant new base area for Vail Mountain. It was formerly approved as EverVail, but those approvals have long since expired.

There are high hopes that West Lionshead will solve some big issues for Vail and be much more than “just another cookie-cutter ski village,” as one town official told the Vail Daily.

“We by no means have a deal with East West regarding West Lionshead that in any way has locked-in numbers for public parking, for employee housing, for publicly available commercial retail space,” said Vail Town Council member and Mayor Pro Tem Reid Phillips, who, along with Council member Sam Biszantz, is part of two-member committee sitting in on regular sessions with East West and Vail Resorts and reporting back periodically to the full council.

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“We do have some public spaces that we have worked on, but as far as locked in deliverables, we do not have those yet,” Phillips said. “I will say that Vail Resorts and East West are just as invested in making sure that this is viable and vibrant new base. You don’t want another dead village at the bottom of the mountain like you’ve seen at other resorts. There’s a local aspect to that as well as the guest aspect, and that’s what I think we’re fighting for.”

Town of Vail staff in charge of facilitating the two-day confab with Leadership Park City on May 27-28 told the Vail Daily the informal gatherings were not considered official public meetings and that no recordings are available of what Park City officials described on Instagram as “a presentation from Vail Resorts, East West Partners, and the Town of Vail on the West Lionshead Development.” At least one Vail Town Council member attended the presentation.

“We gave them a presentation of how we have been working through this process with the town,” Jim Telling of East West Partners said. “We kind of shared just literally a snapshot of where we’re at today, which we’ve not vetted 100% with the council, and we’re going to try to do that in a couple of weeks.” A Vail Town Council update is scheduled for Tuesday, June 16.

Telling previously told the Vail Daily he’s very interested in a base village that will attract both tourists and locals, particularly with upwards of 1,000 year-round residents moving back into Vail as part of the town’s quarter-billion investment in affordable housing just across the interstate and within walking distance of West Lionshead.

“It is a balancing act between — we do not want to completely torpedo the project by asking for too much, and they understand there’s going to be some big gives in order to make it work,” Phillips said.

Phillips added that the realignment of South Frontage Road through the project — something the developer is working on with the Colorado Department of Transportation — means the town must partner on some sort of public financing portal, whether that means tax increment financing (TIF) or a metro district.

“It delivers for the town as well. A lot of people just want to believe that this is … all about a money-grubbing developer,” Phillips said. “We’re making sure that the town gets an equitable contribution. And look, how long have we all looked at the shop yard? How long have people made jokes about EverVail? It is a place that we think that could add to the village. And we’re making sure it’s additive. It’s for the locals, not just the tourists.”

Various numbers from the presentation were discussed off the record with the Vail Daily in terms of on-site workforce housing, fee-in-lieu payments for offsite housing and overall parking, but town officials cautioned none of those numbers are even remotely close to being set in stone yet in a pre-development plan Telling hopes to have in place by the end of the third quarter.

“That’s something that’s still moving and has not been agreed to,” Vail Town Manager Russ Forrest said when asked about specific numbers that came out of the meeting. “Nothing has been accepted on hard numbers as far as parking and housing.”

A big part of last month’s presentation, which was made by Telling, Vail Resorts Director of Real Estate Development Melissa Sherburne and town of Vail Community Development Director Matt Gennett, was to showcase the unique three-way, public-private partnership to Park City.

“That was Russ’s goal in this is to show them how we’ve worked in a partnership with the three groups here on West Lionshead, and it seems to have worked pretty well so far,” Telling said. “We didn’t talk at all about Park City. There was nothing to do with that.”

The West Lionshead deal was a settlement born from the Booth Heights condemnation litigation between the ski company and the town stemming from an approved workforce housing project in East Vail that never got built. And Broomfield, Colorado-based Vail Resorts, which owns both Vail and Park City ski areas, has had issues in Park City as well, including the failure of a base-area redevelopment in early 2023 and years of litigation over chairlift upgrades.

However, Vail Resorts CEO Rob Katz in March told the Vail Daily the ski company will “be standing shoulder to shoulder with (Park City) to make sure we put on the best possible event” heading into the 2034 Winter Olympics. “We are still very committed to Park City and to investing money in Park City.”

A Vail Resorts spokesperson told the Vail Daily on Monday the ski company “was proud to participate in Leadership Park City’s recent visit to Vail and Breckenridge. We were invited to join with our community partners, and it was a genuine opportunity to showcase what strong, long-term collaboration between our resorts and our communities looks like.”

Leadership Park City also reportedly visited Breckenridge, another Vail Resorts ski area in neighboring Summit County, Colorado.

“Our team participated in three panels during the visit. (Retiring Vail COO) Beth Howard and (Breckenridge COO) Jon Copeland joined panels alongside leaders from Vail and Breckenridge, reflecting the deep working relationships we’ve built with both towns over many years,” the spokesperson added in an email comment.

“Melissa Sherburne participated in a panel with East West Partners and the Town of Vail that focused on the West Lionshead development, a real example of what a public-private partnership can accomplish when both sides are aligned around a shared vision for the community. We’re proud of what our partnerships have produced over the years, and we think Vail and Breckenridge are models worth understanding, particularly for communities thinking about the future of their own mountain towns.”

Phillips said being in on the front end of a development is unique and highly beneficial for the town.

“The difference is that you have council represented from the kind of council-ask level on the front end of this thing, rather than it …. getting beat up in PEC (Planning Environmental Commission), DRB (Design Review Board), going to council, getting shot down left, right and center,” Phillips said. “We’re in on the front side of it, which has been helpful. And they’ve been very transparent from the beginning of saying, ‘We understand that this process will go a lot better if you guys are involved on the front end of it.”

A fuller accounting of what’s being envisioned for West Lionshead will be heard by the full Vail Town Council on Tuesday, June 16.