PARK CITY — Changes I’ve seen during my life that I never would have believed:
• The Soviet Union dissolving.
• Bruce Jenner becoming … Bruce Jenner.
• Utah and BYU not playing each other in football … by Utah’s choice.
• And then there’s this latest one: Park West owning Park City.
OK, I know that’s not entirely true. The original Park West ski resort is a far cry from the resort that today is called Canyons. And Park City Mountain Resort is technically a different entity than what it was when it began 51 years ago.
But scrape away the years and the name changes, the ownership transfers, the high-speed lifts and the hundred-dollar day passes, and that’s where you arrive back at: a couple of ski mountains that used to be Park West and Park City.
I know because I skied them a lot. I moved just around the corner to Jeremy Ranch back in 1983 when the Deseret News got its first computer, which meant I could live farther from the office since now I could send my column about last night’s Jazz game from home. (Little did I realize that 30 years later the computer would be the very thing that would bring down newspapers. Which, while we’re on the subject, brings up something else I never thought I’d see happen in a bazillion years: people associated with the Salt Lake Tribune accusing the Deseret News of us trying to put them out of business).
But back to the news that Park City Mountain Resort is selling out to Vail Resorts, which owns leasing rights to Canyons, which used to be Park West.
English translation: Park West owns Park City.
Talk about your topsy-turvy. From a historic perspective, this is like Watts buying Beverly Hills, like Walmart acquiring Neiman-Marcus, like Baltic Avenue owning Boardwalk.
Back in 1963, Park City was the town’s first mega resort, the one that started it all when the miners finally cried uncle and banded together to set a ski resort on several thousand acres atop their played-out mines. The consolidated company they created was called United Park City Mines.
No one knew if their new resort would make it, least of all the federal government that loaned the miners $1.2 million to help get them started, but it did make it and over time what was first officially known as Treasure Mountains Playland, then Park City Ski Area, and finally Park City Mountain Resort — but to everyone else, always and simply Park City — took its place among the world’s top ski areas.
Hardly anyone noticed when four miles and five years down the road, a wannabe resort opened in 1968. Park City West had cool lift names like Iron Horse and one of the greatest ski run names of all time — Slaughterhouse — and every bit as good a ski mountain as Park City because it is, in fact, the same mountain. But it wasn’t Park City, and never would be, and even as Park West grew it always stood in the sizable shadow of big brother, forever playing second fiddle. When the Olympics came, Park City and Deer Valley, its upscale spinoff, got to host medal events. The Canyons got to host the "Today Show."
It looked like that would continue indefinitely, or at least until 2051, which is how long Park City Mountain Resort was entitled to keep renewing the bargain-basement $155,000-a-year property-rights lease it negotiated with United Park City Mines back in the day.
But then came that fateful day in 2011 when someone in the PCMR office missed the deadline to renew the lease.
By now, United Park City Mines had sold the leasing rights to developer Talisker, owner of Canyons, meaning PCMR’s landlord was also its next-door competitor.
Neglecting to send that lease check on time was like letting the winning powerball jackpot ticket expire.
As Talisker and PCMR’s lawyers argued about what to do next, Talisker brought Vail Resorts into the picture to run Canyons and serve as surrogate landlord over PCMR.
When Vail got court approval earlier this month for a $17 million lease this winter — a mere 100 times increase over the old $155,000 — PCMR became what they call a motivated seller and sold out to Vail for $182.5 million.
Some people say there goes the local feel and the quaint old ski town. I say Park City hasn’t been owned by locals in almost 50 years and the quaint went out when day passes shot past $100. (And while we’re on that subject, if Park City had such a sweetheart rent all those years, how come they charged as much as everyone else?)
With a little luck, Vail will do what Park City never did — work with the Forest Service to erect lifts in the mountains between the two resorts that will create a five-mile-long terrific skiing mountain.
This year, the resorts will operate separately, although under the same management. In the meantime, I, for one, now understand why they say never say never. Hang around long enough and you just might see what you never would have believed.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays.
Email: benson@deseretnews.com