Memo to Robert Redford, Katherine Heigl, Mitt Romney and other habitués of Park City: Unless you’re willing to forgo those ski runs into town from Utah’s most accessible ski resort, you might want to consider Hawaii for the holiday season.
That’s because Park City Mountain Resort (PCMR) — with its unique Town Lift, running from Main Street to mountaintop — stands a good chance of not opening.
The go-no/go decision could come as soon as Wednesday, The Post has learned, when a state court judge is expected to decide how much money the resort’s longtime operator must put up to open for the 2014-2015 season.
If the judge sets too high a price, PCMR, which owns the bottom of the mountain — where the ski lifts begin and parking lots are located — may decide to pull up the lifts or deny access to skiers, from Redford and Romney to the everyday tourists who flood Park City’s streets each winter.
The pending decision has business owners in the town of 7,900 on pins and needles.
PCMR and the mountaintop’s new owner, Vail Resorts, couldn’t reach an agreement on which company would operate the posh resort.
Nor could they decide on how much each other’s property is worth.
The dustup began soon after PCMR, the longtime operator of the resort, inadvertently let its $155,000-a-year lease on the slopes expire in 2011.
Slopes owner Talisker Corp. jumped at the chance to sign a lucrative deal with Vail Resorts — the country’s largest mountain-resort operator — to take over litigating the lease dispute with PCMR.
Vail, headed by former private-equity player Rob Katz, would like nothing better than to run PCMR. Combined with its nearby Canyons resort, it would create the largest ski resort in the US, Katz told The Post.
PCMR boss John Cumming wants to reach an agreement with Vail to run the resort. “But it doesn’t include getting screwed,” he told The Post.
Indeed, rather than capitulate to a “low-ball offer” from Vail, Cumming says he’d put the land owned by PCMR to “alternative use.”
He would add it to the five Camp Woodwards — all-season action-sports camps, which at any one time accommodate up to 12,000 campers — already owned and operated by PCMR parent company Powdr Corp.
“It might be painful in the short-term,” Cumming admits. “But we could build an absolutely beautiful camp on the [mountain base] property that the community will love.”
This hypothetical conversion strikes some as a scorched-earth tactic. But if the judge on Wednesday sets too high a price for Cumming’s taste, it could be a Pyrrhic victory for Vail if PCMR blocks entrance to the slopes.
Such a move would also make the $300 million that Vail has committed to Park City lease payments — $25 million a year for 12 years — look reckless for a publicly traded company.
Cumming, however, is adamant: “We’re not bluffing . . . Vail would have a nice sheep pasture up there.”
Vail’s Katz, in contrast, believes court-ordered mediation that began in June can still produce a workable plan.
“Cooler heads will ultimately prevail,” he says.
Better they do so — if they can do so — before Park City regulars start rethinking holiday vacation plans. That would leave many downtown shops a lot poorer.