The Canyons v. Wolf Mountain Resorts: a proposed golf course leads to the courtroom.

• Author: Cutler, Sarah
• Position: CASE PROFILES

Wolf Mountain Resorts, L.C., and The American Skiing Company Utah--now a subsidiary of Canyons owner Talisker Corp.--signed a ground lease agreement in 1997. The agreement leased 4,000 skiable acres of land, known as "The Canyons Ski Resort: to ASCU from Wolf Mountain for a period of up to 200 years.

The ground lease originally signed required ASCU to make annual rent payments to Wolf Mountain, develop the property and pay Wolf Mountain a percentage of the costs of development. Over time and as the property developed, the ground lease gave ASCU the option to transfer title of the property from Wolf Mountain to ASCU.

At the time of the agreement, the land being leased to ASCU was considered a "green field opportunity." Canyons attorney John Lund explains, "It's one of the last places anybody could find in the world that there'd been no meaningful development, where there was a lot of prospect to do a lot of development and build, essentially, a ski village and four-season resort area from scratch."

Some of the Canyons' development plans included condominiums and a golf Coarse. The golf course is what finally brought what Lund referred to as years of contention between the two parties to a courtroom. "This whole story unfolded over years ... And from our perspective there were years and years of failure to cooperate on their part ... they would always have another demand: he says.

The Game Begins

While the Canyons sought to develop the area, Wolf Mountain attorney David Wahlquist, however, claims that the Canyons was in the wrong and ultimately in breach of the lease agreement. The agreement required the Canyons to obtain a Summit County permit for the golf course prior to receiving rights from Wolf Mountain for the land.

Requiring the Canyons to obtain the Summit County permit prevented Wolf Mountain from having to give the acreage up, unless there was a guarantee of the planned golf course.

"It's been 10 years since [Canyons] promised to develop the golf course," Wahlquist says. "They blamed Wolf Mountain for the first five years; they blamed the economy for the second five years."

In relation to the golf course dispute, Lund says, "There was a day in April of 2006 when every other person that had to sign every other document had signed it, and Wolf wouldn't." He continues, 'Instead...they said, 'Oh you know what, actually, you're in default under the leases. That 200-year-long lease--you're in default. You have all these things you've done...