Food and Wine Part II

In last week’s blog I talked about new restaurants in town as well as some of my favorites, but no discussion of Park City’s restaurants would be complete without talking about our two newest ski-in/ski-out resorts at Deer Valley: the St. Regis and the Montage. St. Regis has been open for a little over a year now and has quickly become one of the “in” spots in Park City. Locals and visitors alike enjoy riding the funicular (a European-style cog train) from the base of Deer Valley resort to the St. Regis hotel. The Jean George restaurant along with Chef Jean George Vongerichten have created a spectacular and interesting menu as would be expected of a St. Regis. The restaurant overlooks the ski runs of Deer Crest and Deer Valley resort and is a wonderful setting for a very romantic evening out. During the summer months, the outdoor deck is the place to see and be seen. The outdoor deck features an elongated fire pit, water features, and on weekends, barbecue and live music. Not much better than a summer evening watching the sunset, overlooking the mountains with a nice glass of wine. In addition, the sommelier at the St. Regis, Mark Eberwein was named one of the top sommeliers of 2011 by Food and Wine Magazine.


The newest hotel in Deer Valley is the Montage and is located in the Empire Pass area. The Montage is a boutique hotel with hotels in Laguna Beach, Beverly Hills, and now here in Deer Valley. While the Montage has four different restaurants or pubs, the signature restaurant is Apex with Matt Leonard as head chef. The Montage just opened in December of 2010 and as expected has had a few opening season glitches. The Apex restaurant overlooks the bowls and chutes of Empire Pass and was one of the places to be last ski season. To accommodate the guests for the summer, Deer Valley has expanded the lift service for mountain biking to include the lifts at Empire Pass. I’ll be very interested to see if the outdoor deck at the Montage becomes as popular as the St. Regis in the summer. If you are in town for the summer the restaurants at both the St. Regis and the Montage should be on your schedule of places to visit.

The big news in real estate is how busy it is for this time of year. What is really surprising to me is not only the number of transactions occurring right now but that they are occurring across all price ranges, from the very low to the multi-million-dollar homes. What I also find very interesting is that there is one buyer going around buying up the town. This particular buyer is looking for opportunities to pick up undervalued properties in areas that are likely to see strong appreciation in the next couple of years. He has purchased over 20 lots in the golf course community of Promontory, all of the remaining inventory of a new condo project at Canyons resort, and most recently an existing hotel on Main Street. Promontory features two golf courses, spa, members clubhouse, tennis courts and miles of hiking/biking trails. When Promontory first opened for sale it was overrun with spec home builders and lot flippers. As a result of all this overspeculation prices have fallen to about a third or less of the original purchase price for the lots and homes are selling for far below construction costs. The feeling here is that the homes and lots are undervalued for the community, and will rebound in the near future.

At the Canyons resort two significant things have occurred to make it an attractive investment. The first; nearly two years ago now a Canadian company, Talisker, purchased the ski resort and has made significant improvements to the resort and around the base area. However most important from an investment point of view is that construction on the long awaited golf course has started. The investor/speculator that I have mentioned has purchased most of the remaining inventory that borders the golf course. I agree with him, feeling that with the golf course and Talisker’s backing, Canyons resort will move from the “red-headed stepchild” to taking its place among the premier resorts in Utah. Word about this is just getting out and there are still some excellent investment opportunities at the canyons.

Main Street Park City is and always will be the hub of activity. Along with the Silver Queen Hotel at the base of Main St. which was just purchased by this investor, another investor hast purchased the Imperial Hotel at the top of Main Street. The Imperial was purchased several years ago as part of a package of several hotel buildings on Main Street just prior to the downturn in the economy. As a result the hotel was gutted and then work was stopped. The Imperial was purchased as a bank foreclosure and was certainly one of the better investments on Main Street. In looking at daily activity I see that buyers are here and quickly snatching up distressed properties in good locations and anything else perceived as a bargain.

Winter/spring has not let go (it’s still snowing) but there is hope as we have a forecast for temperatures in the 70s over the next couple of days.