Bridger Bowl’s draft parking amendment

The following amendment to the zoning regulation and Base Area Plan, granting Bridger Bowl more parking, is up for discussion:

Proposed Zone Text Amendments v3rre

Some preliminary comments from BCPOA (via Tom Fiddaman):

I haven’t heard from all of our board, but here’s a summary of some preliminary reactions:

–          The designation of premium carpooling spaces is a good thing.

–          The language doesn’t make the upper limit completely clear. Is it on the basis of spaces or acreage?

o   If the allocation is 6 additional acres, the acreage of the existing lot needs to be designated, otherwise there’s no clarity about the actual limit.

o   If the allocation is (6100 skiers)/(2.5 per car)=2440 spaces, how does that get distributed?

–          Where do the 6 acres go? If they’re south of the existing lot, that puts them on the southeast slope on the other side of the ridge, which is highly visible. It seems like there would need to be some standards, so it’s not just a big cut & fill scar.

–          Leaving runoff mitigation and other standards to the Zoning Advisory Board seems like a good idea in principle. But it doesn’t seem practical, because standards can’t easily be imposed after the lot is built.

–          Changing the single statement about parking in the Goals section of the Base Area Plan seems like it introduces inconsistency. Total parking spaces would increase by 940, providing a total of almost 4000 if the Base Area accommodations are built out, at the same time that a decrease in ultimate skier capacity is recognized. Since the formula provides for completely accommodating 6100 skiers in the lot, the entire rationale for the Base Area development goes away. A small increment in parking might gloss over this, but sooner or later we need to bite the bullet and redo the plan, which is clearly obsolete.

–          I think traffic remains the biggest concern for most people. A 62% increase in parking implies an eventual 62% increment in peak traffic, which seems like a very large increment to take on without considering any mitigation like turn or acceleration lanes.