This story by Aaron Calvin was first published April 6 in the Stowe Reporter.
Despite public concerns about Stowe Mountain Resort’s paid parking plan and its effect on accessibility to public lands, the state government has requested no major changes in the pilot program that’s finishing its first ski season.
Citing traffic data that Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore characterized as “moving in the right direction” following a pair of mid-February meetings involving the state, Vail Resorts and a group of local stakeholders known as the Smugglers Notch Partners, the state decided not to push for any major changes in the paid parking operation at the base of Mount Mansfield.
Paid parking at the resort is limited to those looking to park closest to the mountain on weekends and holidays unless they arrive after 2 p.m. or are in a car with four or more people.
Even before the ski season, a vocal group of mostly local outdoor recreationists decried the $30-a-day parking fee at the base of Mansfield. The criticism grew louder when a new 90-minute parking limit was imposed at Barnes Camp Visitor Center at the bottom of Smugglers Notch, a publicly owned recreation area closed to vehicle traffic in the winter. The time limit hampered the plans of hikers and snowshoers accustomed to spending hours in the area without having to worry about parking.
After winding traffic jams that snarled Mountain Road repeatedly during the 2021-22 ski season, both Stowe municipal leaders and the state called upon Vail Resorts, the Stowe resort’s parent company, to explore mitigation measures for the next ski season. One result was Vail’s proposal for paid parking, perhaps the first of its kind at a Vermont ski resort.
Moore and the Agency of Natural Resources entered negotiations with the corporation with an attitude of acquiescence, while also extracting promises that parking fee profits would go toward expanding public transportation and for mitigating traffic, communications between the agency and Stowe Mountain Resort officials revealed.
As grassroots opposition to the new fees bled into the 2022-23 ski season and as limitations imposed on previously public parking drew increasing ire, Moore decided not to push the matter at the February meetings, opting instead to revisit the issue in the off-season after receiving positive reassurances from Vail.
Throughout discussions, the state has looked to balance necessary traffic calming measures with ensuring access to public lands.
Moore ultimately decided that none of the public concerns warranted pushing Vail to adjust its policies midseason, and that early traffic data from an unusually mild winter was enough to show that progress was being made.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got a somewhat challenging set of circumstances,” Moore said. “Route 108 is a fairly narrow road and is constrained in terms of how many people can take it to the resort. We’re trying to consider the multiple purposes that one corridor serves along with environmental concerns, from greenhouse gas emissions to plowing and salt application and erosion and access to public lands for recreational users. It’s fair to say that those can be competing at times.
“We’re really trying to optimize overall conditions in the area and appreciate that some folks may feel that they’ve seen a diminishment in terms of what they expect, but my hope would be, or my vision and opinion, is that if we’re able to show overall improvement in conditions, that this will be a success,” she said.
Parking process
Stowe Mountain Resort general manager Bobby Murphy first laid out, in no uncertain terms, the fully fleshed out terms of the paid parking proposal to Moore at a meeting last July, but it took the Agency of Natural Resources time just to determine whether Vail’s lease even allowed such a plan.
Murphy promised a “material reduction of cars visiting Stowe Resort at peak times,” based on Vail’s experience with paid parking at other resorts and an improvement to “overall access to the mountain.”
Along with the general outlines of the parking fee rules, Murphy acknowledged that the agency had concerns that “public access to the leasehold remains unimpeded” and that access would still be maintained by non-fee parking lots — those at the Toll House and the resort’s cross-country ski center, the nearest of which is about 2 miles from The Notch — and regular Green Mountain Public Transit shuttles ferrying visitors.
From the outset, the state insisted that the goals of the program be clearly articulated, and the data monitored to ensure public transparency. Moore wanted details on how, exactly, charging for parking would alleviate congestion, and a little better communication from Vail.
“The Agency appreciates the recent outreach the Resort has conducted with both this Agency as well as the Agency of Transportation (VTrans) and, in the future, would encourage the Resort to engage with the Agency earlier in the development of programs or initiatives that impact land owned by the state so we can work collaboratively to address concerns,” Moore wrote in an email.
In the fall, the two parties met again to hammer out the fine print. Vail provided the state with a projected budget for the paid parking project and projected revenue. Murphy didn’t include the specific number in his follow-up email, though he noted that the resort had pledged $250,000 in increased shuttle service for the 2022-23 season, a fivefold increase from previous funding.
In addressing projected visitor numbers and traffic reduction from the paid parking program, Murphy warned that recent seasons were likely anomalous.
“The 2020-2021 season was a very unique operating environment due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the significant operating changes and restrictions that were required. For that reason, we do not believe guest behaviors from that season are predictive or instructive of the way guests will choose to access the resort under the paid parking system,” Murphy wrote in an October email.
The resurgence of skiers and the 2021-22 season were also unique. Vail suffered a hit to its stock price that began last January following what some industry analysts diagnosed as the overselling of Epic passes, a flat-fee card that gets you into Vail-owned resorts across the country, compared to thin staffing levels at many of its 37 resorts.
The stock price was in freefall until March, when it began to rebound following an announcement that the corporation had higher skier visits in the second quarter of the 2023 fiscal year despite slumping profits.
A final meeting between Vail and the state agency took place last November when Murphy spelled out the specifics on metrics the resort would monitor to determine the effectiveness of the program. Settled without any debate was the matter of Barnes Camp and its new 90-minute parking limit, seemingly unaware that it would become a major point of contention for Notch recreationists.
February summit
After a dry start to the 2022 winter, it wasn’t only snowfall that began to pick up following the new year. Criticism of paid parking grew as well.
Although Alan Kovacs, a Massachusetts-based lawyer and frequent Stowe visitor, became the public face of the campaign, Moore also faced requests from Vermont residents to stop the fee-based parking program.
Moore promised one Waterbury Center resident that she initially shared her concerns about the program, but promised it was being scrutinized and potential changes could be made after periodic reviews.
When it came to a Winooski resident who accused the state and Vail of penalizing recreationists like him who enjoy summiting Mount Mansfield in the winter, Moore leaned on Becca Washburn, the lands administration and recreation director, to supply talking points around the need for traffic mitigation measures and accountability for the resort.
In mid-January, Stowe Town Manager Charles Safford asked to be kept in the loop regarding discussions of paid parking on state-owned land, considering the town is conducting its own traffic analysis with the consulting company Stantec.
Safford was the only attendee other than representatives from the state and Vail to attend both the Smugglers Notch Partners meeting and the more exclusive powwow between just the state and Vail.
The Smugglers Notch Partners meeting, organized by Lamoille County Planning Commission deputy director Seth Jensen, meets regularly and includes members from the Agency of Natural Resources, Agency of Transportation, Vail Resorts, the Stowe town government and the Green Mountain Club, which manages the section of the Long Trail that passes through the Mansfield area.
Jensen called a Feb. 10 meeting primarily to talk about Barnes Camp parking, and it was established beforehand that the town of Stowe and others planned to push the Agency of Transportation to plow farther up Route 108 to make more free parking available within the Notch itself, something that Agency of Transportation policy director Michele Boomhower said she was uncertain was even possible.
Moore said after the idea arose that the partners mutually agreed plowing farther up Route 108 wasn’t feasible.
“I think the biggest issue with that is that we know that recreational users who are sort of coming back from cross-country skiing often come down the road on skis, and plowing up there would affect that ongoing usage, so was determined that that didn’t seem to be particularly favorable from anyone’s perspective upon further consideration,” Moore said.
Moore also said the partners were frustrated that Vail didn’t better communicate that much of the parking at the resort is still free, and all of it is free outside of weekends and holidays. Partners also wanted to see better visibility at the shuttle bus stops along Mountain Road for safety reasons.
Though the 90-minute parking limit on Barnes Camp was the primary concern, Moore said she’s also heard from those who appreciate the mandated turnover the time limit has created, though they’re admittedly fewer in number than those upset by it.
At the more exclusive Feb. 14 meeting between the agency and Vail, the resort used traffic monitoring data through December to show that paid parking was having its intended effect, albeit in small sample size.
According to the data provided by Vail, 43 percent of those parking in paid lots were carpooling to avoid paying the fee, and shuttle bus ridership was up 13 percent. Traffic along Stowe’s major roads was down across the board year-over-year and was down in the corridor between Luce Hill Road and the resort by 47 percent at peak travel times.
Other factors, including the mildness of the early winter, likely played a part in the dearth of visitors the resort saw early in the season, but the state accepted the data as evidence the problem was “moving in the right direction.”
“It seemed to demonstrate success, or at least trends moving in the right direction,” Moore said. “I think that there’s more work to be done and another look to be taken at the end of the season, when we have the benefit of when they tend to see their highest year numbers, and we look forward to having those conversations.”
Moore said the state will meet with Vail again in the first few weeks of May for a report on the resort’s traffic data for the 2022-23 ski season. The state could potentially propose adjustments to the paid parking program, but so far Moore hasn’t been convinced that accessibility to public lands has been so limited that it warrants changes.
Money mountain
Underlying the Agency of Natural Resources negotiations with Vail Resorts over parking is the matter of money — namely that, since Vail took over operations in 2017, the profitability of Stowe Mountain Resort has grown extensively.
Each year, Vail pays the state a lease fee, essentially the corporation’s rent for use of state-owned land. The fee is determined by an undisclosed algorithm composed of the resort’s different avenues of revenue and was redacted in documents requested by the Stowe Reporter.
After Vail purchased Stowe Mountain Resort for $50 million in 2017, its first lease fee payment to the state following its first full winter in operation, the 2017-18 ski season, was just over $827,000.
Following the unusually crowded 2021-22 ski season, Vail paid the state a lease fee of $1.2 million.
Michael Snider, then-commissioner of the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation and a Stowe resident, pressed Murphy to be more forthcoming with the state about how much money the state receives for each Epic pass ticket holder who visits the mountain.
“I sure hope you all can provide a concise explanation to address what really is a pretty legitimate and simple question. Not doing so invites questions, suspicions, and likely worse,” Snyder wrote, though he assured Murphy he had no particular “ax to grind.”
According to Moore, the agency is still trying to nail down exactly how Vail Resorts determines the state’s cut of one of the company’s major revenue sources.
“We certainly have the approach that’s been proposed by Stowe (Mountain Resort),” Moore said. “I think it probably deserves a bit of additional scrutiny and that’s something we’re committed to undertaking.”
