Youthful think tank plants headquarters in rural town to some neighbors’ frustration
The
Salt Lake Tribune's Cathy McKitrick provides an eye-opening WCF-topical story this morning on the latest dust-up in the never-dull
Ogden Valley. At center stage in this pending flap we find
the Summit Series group, the youthful and
internet wunderkind investor group, who
arrived in the Valley last year with their acquisition of
Powder Mountain Resort,
amidst considerable public media fanfare. Unlike their
Powder Mountain ownership predecessor,
Western American Holdings, who'd put
Ogden Valley residents through
five years of legal grief, with battles raging from
Utah Courts, coursing through the
State Legislature and pouring into the
Weber County Commission chambers,
Summit Series had billed itself as
environmentally and citizen-friendly, and were thus welcomed by Valley residents more or less with open arms. Despite the fact however that the
Summit Series Group has in many ways
put its best foot forward to win over the full support of sorely gun-shy
Ogden Valley lumpencitizens, that still isn't happening, as Ms. McKitrick reports:
And perhaps troublingly, we learn via a story provided by yet another sharp-eyed
Weber County Forum reader, that
"annoying-your-neighbor-wise," this
ain't exactly Summit Series' "first rodeo":
So what about it folks? Will
Weber County code enforcement officials ultimately succeed in toning down Summit Series'
"rock star-style" corporate culture and bring this
unorthodox (shall we say?) ski resort investor and management group's behavior into closer alignment with
Ogden Valley's heretofore "udderly" bucolic lifestyle?
Or, in the alternative, will the forces of BIG MONEY and prospects of an increased
Weber County property tax base lead our
Weber County Commission and code enforcement authorities to turn a blind eye toward
Summit Series' Eden Party Mansion, and treat
Eden residents such as Eric Sontag as
"nosy neighbors with a little too much time on their hands"?
Added bonus questions:
1) Ms. McKitrick reports that
"Summit is poised to finalize its Powder Mountain transaction by the end of April and could pay up to $40 million in funds gathered from investors," raising the sodden question of what happens to
Weber County's recently approved
$22.5 million bonding application in the event that
Summit somehow manages to fail in closing its property acquisition escrow?
2) Hello, people. Are we the only ones who'd been previously led to believe that the
Powder Mountain acquisition was already a
done deal?
4 comments:
Well Weber County has kicked in with taxpayer public funding.
I guess enforcing current single-family residential zoning, and Summit setting some kind of track record for respecting the existing laws of the community (i.e. NOT running a business, entertaining hundreds of investors 24/7 to a home with a septic system with a capacity for only 7 people) doesn't bother other county residents. Never mind Ogden's drinking water. Who has the NIMBI attitude? Let's not forget about this is the road the Valley School children walk down every day with a sudden 3-fold increase in traffic due to Summit's business operations from the house. Maybe reading the full article in the Trib would be enlightening.
I read the full article. Some of the complaints were phrased as "may haves" not certainties ( encroaching on FS land), others flatly denied by the investor ( fence cutting). Entertaining "hundreds of investors twenty-four seven" would be a zoning code violation, but it's at this point merely an allegation, which the local official quoted said had not been established. Looking into it, he said. Hundreds twenty-four seven? Hundreds? That'd be pretty hard to miss. Have the police been calledabout the alleged speeding problem? Any response? Any ticketing? Article doesn't say.
It's the investor's street too. He lives there .
If he's operating the house as a confrence center, the town should stop it, absolutely. But the story has so many allegations being flung at him. as " may haves" and unestablished allegations and the investor has reportedly been so willing to be accommodating about some of the complaints, that at this point, yes, I ' m skeptical that they're all soundly grounded.
And no, given the( now amended) Developers Dream Bill, I don't think you have much hope of stopping the resort's expancion or the concommitant development that will come to the
valley.
There are approximately 15 houses on Stringtown. At the county meeting with each commissioner, which the author of the article attended, the half-dozen residents offered to sign affidavits on the spot to verify the hundreds of people coming to the house each week. Summit had 6 white passenger vans operating at 5 minute intervals from 7am to 2am shuttling out-of-town investors to the house. The code enforcement officer came to verify on her own time these activities. An investigation was opened on the issue. A petition was signed by over 100 people from the valley asking the county to enforce this. Summit does not own this house. While commissioner Bell agreed to monitor speed, no action has yet been taken. Needless to say the residents feel the county has been dragging their feet on this issue.
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