Powder Mountain unveiled a new slogan this season: Escape the Masses.
Yet even at the largest ski area in North America, achieving that directive could become increasingly more difficult for guests over the next 25 years pending a decision by county officials on the resort’s proposed master plan.
At its meeting Tuesday, the Cache County Council will consider approving Powder Mountain’s request for a rezone of more than 1,600 acres. Approval of the designation would allow the resort to take a step forward with a plan to add hundreds of houses and condos, at least one hotel and up to six corporate retreats over the next two decades.
For the county, one of the smallest in Utah, the council’s decision could be impactful in shaping its future for generations.
“This is the first step in a longer process that we’re going to be grappling with as a county,” Dirk Anderson, the county’s interim director of development services, told the council on Jan. 28.
“We also have a lot of responsibility ourselves to make sure that we get the review of the looming, impending master plan correct.”
Powder Mountain has undergone a facelift since Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings took over the Ogden Valley resort in 2023. Hastings promised to infuse the ski area with $100 million in infrastructure improvements. And this season he embarked on a novel plan to create a private community at the top of the mountain and run both private and public lifts within the resort.
As part of that plan, Powder Mountain is asking the council to rezone 1,621 acres in the Davenport area that it acquired last spring. The acreage, which runs along Davenport Road almost to where it connects with Flint Grove Road on the north end of the resort, carries a Forest Recreation 40 zoning designation. In that zone, development is basically limited to seasonal cabins. Hotels, restaurants and food trucks are prohibited.
In lieu of that, the resort is seeking a rezone to the more development-friendly Resort Recreation designation. Under that zoning, Powder Mountain could build more densely in some areas while keeping the rest mostly rugged, according to Brooke Hontz, the resort’s chief development and construction officer.
Both zoning designations allow for the installation and operation of ski lifts.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
In addition to the land it is looking to rezone, Powder Mountain already has 3,580 acres in Cache County that were designated as Resort Recreation during the 2001-02 ski season. Hontz said most of the development is planned for that land. Adding these 1,600 acres would allow the ski area and county officials, Hontz said, to “have all of that ownership under one plan and one conversation.”
She added that because most of the homes are expected to be second homes, they would qualify as “seasonal cabins.” The resort, therefore, could still build them without the rezone. The difference is that they would be spread out across the entire 1,600 acres, she said, instead of concentrated into a 97-acre swath as planned.
“You’d pretty much sprawl across the top of the mountain,” she said in a phone interview with The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday, “because you’re required to, not necessarily because you want to.”
Hotels, corporate retreats and retail are not allowed under the current zoning, however. Hontz said Powder Mountain does not currently have plans to build any of that on the 1,600-acre parcel.
“There’s no multi-family [residences] or hotel planned within the master plan of the rezone area,” she told the Tribune. “It’s all in the existing area that’s already rezoned.”
(Tristan Sadler | Powder Mountain) Skiers and snowboarders take a slow ride up the Timberline lift during opening weekend at Powder Mountain on Dec. 9, 2023. The resort replaced the lift with a fixed-grip quad for the 2024-25 season, and the area will be the site of considerable mixed-use development if Powder Mountain's master plan is approved by Cache and Weber county officials.
Maps show most of the mixed-use development is planned near the current Timberline Lodge. Another cluster is in the southeast corner of the resort, between Valhalla and Raintree and also at the top of the Raintree lift. Anderson said the new rezone could allow for denser development in those areas.
Powder Mountain stands as the largest ski area in North America with 12,850 skiable acres (though it is second to Park City Mountain in the United States in terms of lift-accessed terrain). The sprawling resort straddles both Cache and Weber counties. In 2015, Weber County rezoned more than 6,000 acres of Powder Mountain to allow for commercial development similar to what the ski area is requesting in Cache County.
Cache County is the eighth smallest of the state’s 29 counties by size with 750,666 acres, according to the Geographic Information Systems database. The total area Powder Mountain is asking to be zoned as Resort Recreation accounts for .66% of the county’s total acreage.
With more than 100 people per square mile, though, Cache County has also been designated one of Utah’s six “urban counties” by the state’s public health service. And it is among the fastest growing.
The Cache County General Plan was created to manage that growth, and the requested rezone is partially consistent with that plan. The area has been given a “Mountain Rural and Conservation” designation, the preferred uses for which include outdoor recreation and tourism. Secondary land uses include resorts.
“It can be very impactful,” said Daniel Dansie, an attorney who handles land use and zoning cases at the Salt Lake City based firm Kirton McConkie. “From the developer’s perspective, it’s impactful in a super positive way. They’re going to say that this is going to bring additional jobs, additional resources to the community. … [But] anytime you do a rezone, it can potentially have significant effects for the community because you’re changing the scope of what’s the permitted use on the property.”
Hontz told the council that the project would pump $40,000 into Cache County in its first year. In 25 years, when it is expected to be fully built out, she said it would capture $5.4 million for the county and $7.69 million for the Cache County School District.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Brooke Hontz seen at Deer Valley Resort in December 2022, is Powder Mountain's chief development and construction officer. She is helping the resort navigate county permits, rezones and approvals.
If the council approves the rezone, that will likely be its last say on what happens at Powder Mountain. The resort presented its master plan to the Cache County Planning Commission in November, and that body will be tasked with deciding whether to approve the plan or require changes. The planning commission will also be responsible for reviewing any permit and variant development requests.
That’s why the council has not rushed to approve the rezone, Anderson, the interim county planning director, told the Tribune.
“We’re taking steps to doubly review our own code,” Anderson said, “and make sure that we give Powder Mountain the due process they deserve, and that they maintain their rights to develop their land – that they should – but also protect the public interest.”
That’s a different tack than the council took last summer, when it agreed to allow the resort to bypass county zoning rules to build two lifts in time for the 2024-25 ski season. The Lighting Ridge and Raintree lifts are not included in Powder Mountain’s current master plan and the council voted 4-3 to allow the resort to install them before its newly proposed master plan was granted approval.
Powder Mountain may ask for another exemption in the coming months. It has at least one new lift, to the Davenport area, slated for construction this summer. That lift is not on the resort’s current master plan and a decision by the planning commission on that proposal has been delayed while the council mulls the rezone request.
Powder Mountain also hopes to replace its 1990s-era on-mountain maintenance facility, Hontz said, as well as build more hiking and biking trails during the warmer months.
Hontz said the county still has plenty of guardrails in place to make the development fit its vision.
“Even though the use is allowed, you can’t just go do it wherever you want to,” she said. “You have to go indicate where you want things, get them approved, and then come back with site-specific development plans if they’re things like commercial uses, and then pull a building permit. So, there’s like four steps.”
Granting the rezone, however, would eliminate several barriers — perhaps for both Powder Mountain and the county.
