New luxury resort could change small-town feel of Moab

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New luxury resort could change small-town feel of Moab



By CASSIE HEWLINGS
The Daily Sentinel
Sunday, July 20, 2008

It?s a 12-mile loop of blistering sun and red sandstone at the center of the mountain-biking universe. The world knows it as the Slickrock Trail. But the locals of Moab, Utah, know it simply as home.

Moab?s days as a sleepy, hidden-gem destination with a population of 4,875, according to the U.S. Census, may be numbered, however. The largest resort development in the town?s history, the Lionsback Resort, is weaving its way through approval and annexation into the city.

The resort would sit at the head of the entrance to the Slickrock Trail and the Sand Flats recreation area and is one of several developments around Moab approved by the city and Grand County to keep up with the demand for vacation, luxury housing.

The proposed development has split the community along differing definitions of what constitutes a desirable place to live: those who wish to see economic growth and those who wish to shelter Moab?s slower-paced lifestyle.

?That?s really at the heart of what the concern around this project is,? City Councilman Rob Sweeten said. ?We have our rural feel and our image and reputation as a green community. So, hearing something like Lionsback Resort is like drinking vinegar.

?But we can?t say no to development if it?s in the appropriate zone.?

Opponents of Lionsback say they are upset that the public has not been kept adequately informed about the project. The site for the development is also problematic, they claim, because it sits on the only access road to the Slickrock Trail near Moab?s drinking supply. Increased traffic from the development would endanger bike riders who use the road, they say, and any contamination to the water drainage on the site would flow into the town?s drinking water.

Proponents of Lionsback argue the development will bring in tax dollars without taxing city resources while meeting the demand for vacation housing in Moab.

Moab is under a housing crunch, said Jeff Reinhart, the city?s planning director. Vacation-home seekers are buying homes that would otherwise be affordable for full-time residents, he said, and that is driving up prices.

?One in three homes in Moab is a vacation home,? Reinhart said. ?The growth in that market is killing us.?

Julianne Fitzgerald, however, says that market no longer exists.

Fitzgerald, a real estate broker in Moab who opposes the development, said Lionsback most likely would sit empty and unsold. She claims the demand for vacation homes bottomed out four months ago after a peak in 2006.

?Right now, we can?t give away homes at $100,000,? Fitzgerald said. ?How do they expect to sell $400,000 starter mansions??

Jeanette Kopell, a member of the Moab?s planning commission, said the project would not flood the town?s real estate market with unsold homes. Lionsback is planned across five phases, she said, and whether the homes in the first two phases sold would determine if the later phases would even be built.

The Lionsback Resort, which had its preliminary master plan approved unanimously by the Moab City Council in June, is the brainchild of Mike Badger and Mike Lawler, who are real estate developers in Telluride.

The site is 175 acres, with 46.8 acres devoted to development across Sand Flats Road from the Moab landfill, according to the preliminary design plan. The city and the developers are working on annexing the property to provide water and sewer utilities to the development, and Sweeten said the city could make that decision in the next three weeks.

Badger declined to comment, except to say Lionsback is ?near the finish line.?

?But it?s been a dicey situation,? he said.

The city planning commission was first approached with the idea two years ago, Reinhart said, but there was no appropriate zone where the resort could be built.

The city created a sensitive-area resort zone, Reinhart said, tailored to the Lionsback Resort proposal as a mixed commercial-residential development, but it requires 70 percent of the development to be open space with environmentally friendly building mandates such as height restrictions.

?Lionsback is by far the most sustainable resort project proposed,? said Chris Baird, owner of Arches Musical Instrument Co. ?That is not to say I like it or condone it. I don?t like it.?

Kopell said anyone who opposed the development had ample opportunity to voice concerns prior to this summer. Now, Lionsback is all but unstoppable.

?I can see where they are coming from, but no one came to talk to me,? Kopell said. ?This is a wake-up call to Moab to be more involved.?

Moab?s newspaper, the Times-Independent, published seven notices in 2007 and 2008 notifying its readers of meetings the planning commission and the city council were having regarding Lionsback.

Reinhart and Sweeten said no one attended those meetings in opposition of Lionsback, but the City Council amended its procedures to include two public hearings on developments such as this for the future, Sweeten said.

?The people who have ideological opposition to this are not doing so because they haven?t had a chance to be heard,? Sweeten said, ?but because they have a tactical self-interest in a late arrival.?

Fitzgerald said she filed a petition July 14 with approximately 250 signatures protesting the annexation proposal. Though she said no one who opposes Lionsback has any intention of filing a lawsuit against the development, the situation is starting to sound all too familiar to Cloudrock, Sweeten said.

The Cloudrock Resort Development, a luxury development seven miles south of Moab, has been tied up in lawsuits filed by opposing Moab residents since 2003.

?No one seems to understand that we are not going to change SITLA?s mission statement,? Sweeten said, referring to Utah?s State Institutional and Trust Lands Administration, which owns the Lionsback site and is tasked with generating revenue for Utah?s public schools through the management of real estate trusts. ?Their job is to make money. They are not going to leave that land open.?