Officials with Steamboat Resort say snowmelt is essential for safety of their guests while City Council members insist new snowmelt needs to be powered by renewable energy.
A difference in priorities for a redesigned Gondola Transit Center could delay the project beyond the six-month pause Steamboat Springs City Council initiated in December and has the potential to derail redesign efforts entirely.
The disagreement between the city and Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. surrounds the extensive snowmelt system that is currently part of the preferred design for a new GTC. While the resort insists snowmelt needs to be part of the project to protect the safety of guests, this City Council has made reigning in the climate impacts of such systems one of its focuses since being seated at the end of 2023.
The easy way out of this problem is to power a new snowmelt system with geothermal technology, but whether this is a viable path forward is so far unclear. In December, Council agreed to delay a decision on how to proceed with GTC for six months until they knew whether geothermal was an option. The feasibility study intended to answer that question may now take until the end of the year to wrap up.
If that study determines geothermal is not a viable option, council and resort officials would need to find some sort of compromise that either limits snowmelt use, finds an alternative energy source or employs a combination of each. An agreement between Steamboat Resort and the city requires both sides to agree in order to proceed with overhauling GTC.
“It’s not just a matter of saying let’s just do a different design that doesn’t have snowmelt and let’s get going on it, because it has to meet certain criteria,” said City Manager Tom Leeson. “Quite honestly, we could get to a certain point where we say, we’re not going to do anything. We’re just going to leave it the way it is because, in some respects, it works.”
The snowmelt discussion highlights a tug and pull between Ski Town, U.S.A.’s climate action goals and the resort-based economy that has helped give Steamboat that moniker. While snowmelt systems have become commonplace in ski towns like Steamboat, they also tend to burn natural gas. A new natural gas snowmelt system installed now would likely continue to burn fossil fuels for decades, something this rendition of City Council has specifically sought to put a stop to.
The first decision made by this council was to revisit an ordinance passed in 2023 in order to increase restrictions on the use of fossil fuels like natural gas in snowmelt systems, instead requiring them to be powered by renewable energy. That change put the city in line with a recommendation in the adopted Routt County Climate Action Plan. Council then denied a project near the resort base area last year that was attempting to use natural gas-powered snowmelt.
Current designs for GTC include significant snowmelt in the plaza area as well as part of sawtooth-shaped bus berths that help separate pedestrians from buses. City transit officials say snowmelt is needed for this design as it requires buses to make tight maneuvers.
An alternative design would use a pull-through concept for buses and would not need snowmelt in the bus area. That design would use a pavement island concept similar to what is in place now at GTC. That requires bus riders to cross in front of buses to get to the plaza, an issue that a redesigned GTC hoped to address.
While snowmelt could be eliminated in the bus area, a design that doesn’t include snowmelt at all is likely a non-starter. Steamboat Resort’s Director of Development Michael Ann LaMotte said on Tuesday that they see the geothermal study informing the use of snowmelt in the bus area, not on the plaza where they see it as essential.
“The resort does feel very strongly about the necessity to have snowmelt in the plaza for safety of our guests,” LaMotte said. “The current exercise is more so related to the bus design.”
Council member Bryan Swintek was perhaps the most vocal in his frustration with the lack of progress on GTC, saying that he views the whole thing as another negotiation with the resort. Swintek openly invited dealmaking with him specifically on Tuesday, noting that he is a “swing vote” on Council.
“If the resort wants snowmelt, and we say we don’t want snowmelt, come with an offer,” Swintek said. “It’s a game of politics. I am the swing vote. You could get a majority. … If you want snowmelt, come with more than five really lame designs that are all just a lot of snowmelt.”
The city and Steamboat Ski & Resort Corp. are already in negotiations about a lift tax, which has been discussed as a potential funding source for the city’s free bus system. Swintek is one of two Council negotiators in those talks.
The city already has an agreement with Ski Corp. about partnering to rebuild GTC. This deal was part of the approval of metro districts near the base area and limits the total city contribution toward the project to $20 million. The agreement requires both sides to agree on how to proceed.
Council member Joella West said she felt Council was rehashing the discussion they had in December when they agreed to wait for results from the geothermal study before picking a final design. Council ultimately agreed to keep waiting for the geothermal study on Tuesday, continuing with the pause initiated in December.
“It seems to me as though we have a little bit of amnesia on Council tonight,” West said. “We’re still in the middle of that pause, so I don’t see any benefit in now saying well, we haven’t waited the full six months but we’ve just lost patience with this project.”
In addition to the geothermal study, the GTC project team is looking into other options including water-source heat pumps, solar thermal, renewable diesel and biomass boilers. Still, a staff report notes “early findings indicate that it will be difficult to find a suitable option that is affordable, doesn’t create environmental nuisance such as noise or smoke and doesn’t rely on either a full electric backup or seasonal thermal storage system.”
Another way projects have fulfilled the city’s snowmelt restrictions have been to put in electric boilers and enrolling in a program that certifies the energy is coming from renewable sources. Yampa Valley Electric Association is currently studying whether they could provide enough electricity to that area for a snowmelt system and what upgrades may be needed to do so.