SALT LAKE CITY — More than six acres of the Utah Olympic Park in Park City may be leased or even sold to a developer that plans to build a four-story hotel near where Olympians competed on ski jumps and a bobsled, luge and skeleton track in 2002 and will again at the 2034 Winter Games.
The project, which has been submitted to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission for approval, has been part of the park’s master plan for more than a decade, said Colin Hilton, president and CEO of the nonprofit Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation that owns and operates the 400-acre site used for training and recreation as well as competition.
“It’s going to be a three-star hotel geared toward families and visitors to what we offer up here, but also guests (going) into Park City as well,” Hilton said, rather than a luxury resort although it would have a restaurant and a conference center. Construction likely wouldn’t start until 2026, he said.
Architectural renderings show a nearly 270,000-square-foot hotel with some 120 rooms wrapping around the park’s popular freestyle training pool and jumps where skiers and snowboarders practice their aerial skills in warm weather. The park’s first building, now used largely as office space, would be torn down to make way for the hotel, which would have its own pool.
Christopher M. Conabee, a principal in the Salt Lake City-based Utah Development and Construction hired by the foundation in 2016, said it will take at least two years to build the hotel. He said it may be “condominiumized” like many Park City hotels where units are sold individually but available as hotel rooms when not in use by the owners.
How much will the proposed Utah Olympic Park hotel cost?
It’s too early to put a price on the project, Conabee said, or provide many details.
He said economic development tools such as tax increment financing could be used, but added, “This is a stand alone, private investment in a hotel. Any public monies that are used for the facility or the infrastructure go directly to the park, not to the developer.”
Conabee, who served as managing director for corporate recruitment in former Gov. Gary Herbert’s economic development office, said the goal is to help make the park self-sustainable through projects that can generate revenues. There was discussion about first building office space at the park, he said, but the decision was made to go with the hotel first.
“We’ll have the ability to do what no one in the world has ever done. That’s kind of what excites us as developers,” Conabee said. It’s always been a government or an agency that helps subsidize these facilities. So by having real estate development, by having tax increment and keeping those taxes on site for the park, we now erase the threat of our venues ever going away.”
The park’s master plan calls for not just a hotel but additional development to “complement Winter Olympic training facilities and programs,” including office buildings and sports medicine services. An $18.5 million “Performance and High Altitude Training Center” and clinic at the park has already been pitched to lawmakers.
A project already developed by Conabee’s company is the Residences at Utah Olympic Park, which provide 146 subsidized beds for park employees as well as athletes and coaches. The complex is owned and operated by the foundation and, Hilton said, barely breaks even.
‘We’ve got to do something’: Venues losing $2M annually
Adding a hotel is a way for the foundation to raise money to help cover operating costs, Hilton said.
“The challenge, just to be blunt, is we’re losing over $2 million a year just running the Olympic park, he said, adding that the legacy fund established with $76 million in profits from the 2002 Games and grown through investments, donations and revenues from public bobsled rides and other activities, is down to $46 million.
Although the Utah Legislature has appropriated more than $90 million in recent years for capital improvements at the state’s Olympic facilities, including those at the park, any additional funds for operating costs won’t come until after Utah hosts the 2034 Winter Games, Hilton said.
“So we’ve got to do something to reduce our losses,” he said.
There’s long been talk of leasing or selling land at the park for a hotel next to the freestyle pool, including in 2007, when the Utah Legislature passed a resolution allowing for up to 10% of the Utah Olympic Park property to be sold to private developers for a limited time.
The time restriction was lifted by lawmakers in 2020, but the governor has to approve any deal.
The ski jump and bobsled, skeleton and luge track at the park as well as other venues were built with taxpayer dollars in the 1990s to bid for the Olympics and later sold to the 2002 Winter Games organizers. Since the Olympics, they’re all run by the foundation, but should the nonprofit go out of business, ownership of the park would revert back to the state.
Hotel plans advancing because of the 2034 Games?
News of the proposed hotel surfaced only recently. Summit County Planner Laura Kuhrmeyer said the application for the project isn’t complete, so a public hearing has not yet been scheduled. She said it may be October or later before the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission considers the application.
Utah was awarded the 2034 Winter Games by the International Olympic Committee on July 24, after more than a decade of bidding to host again. But the timing of the long-planned hotel project finally progressing isn’t tied to Utah getting another Games, Hilton said.
“What we’re going to see at all of our Olympic venues is an uptick in all levels of interest,” Hilton said. “We will see a bump in the sports programs. We will see the intrigue of people, knowing there’s a Games coming in 10 years to come check out our museum and see what’s going on and watch athletes flip into the pool.”
But he said the plans to built a hotel would be going forward even if the Olympics weren’t returning to Utah.
“We would have been doing this regardless of whether we got a Games or not. In fact, this project would have been more important had we been put off,” Hilton said. “The important thing is, we have to get to (where we) balance the books and our financials are not there. I would say the pressure would have been more to get this up and running if the Olympics weren’t coming.”
He said his wants the foundation to be in a position of not having to ask for any more state money following the 2034 Winter Games. New revenue sources, along with profits from the privately funded Games, “should pave a way” to meet that goal, Hilton said.
Conabee said a hotel at the park is a project for the long term.
He said he’s “not sure yet how another Games will fit into the financials of a project, but I would imagine it would help during the three weeks of the Games. But that won’t be enough revenue to help the facility for the lifespan of the next 50 years. It has to work in all of the years and months other than the Olympics to work at all.”
