County Planning Commissioner Returning to Panel Has Long History as Attorney for Park City Mountain

Adam Strachan spent years at the Park City Planning Commission dais as its chair, presiding over some of the most contested hearings in the panel's recent history. Now he is back at the table as a commissioner, while his Prospector-based law firm actively defends Park City Mountain and resort owner Vail Resorts in personal-injury cases and while the resort's lift upgrade applications are already pending before the same body.

Mayor Ryan Dickey appointed Strachan to fill the seat vacated by Bill Johnson, who resigned in February. The midterm appointment runs through July 2028 on the seven-member commission.

Strachan's firm has represented Park City Mountain and other Utah ski resorts in personal-injury litigation for decades. His professional biography states he has "defended nearly every ski resort in Utah," with case work that includes a wrongful death lawsuit tied to an in-bounds avalanche.

The timing sharpens the conflict question. Park City Mountain's applications to upgrade two lifts, including converting the Silverlode Express from a six-passenger to an eight-passenger detachable lift, are currently before the commission. The panel toured the resort as part of that review in late March.

Strachan said he will handle potential conflicts on a case-by-case basis in consultation with municipal attorneys. On the lift applications specifically, he said it is unclear whether recusal is necessary and that he must first research the city's conflict-of-interest rules, review the submitted materials, and speak with municipal staff before deciding. His prior tenure offers at least one precedent: commission meeting minutes from that era show Strachan disclosed he would recuse himself from the Vail Interconnect application "due to business reasons."

The conflict questions are not limited to the lift review. The commission is also set to weigh in on a workforce housing development at Clark Ranch near Quinn's Junction, a mixed-use project in Bonanza Park, and Deer Valley Resort's proposal to remake Snow Park into a full-service base area. Each involves the full toolkit of planning authority: density approvals, conditional use permits, subdivision entitlements, and design review under the Land Management Code, along with formal recommendations to the City Council on General Plan amendments and annexations.

Strachan's original commission tenure ran from 2008 to 2018. He chaired the panel during the multi-year review of the Treasure Hill proposal, a contested residential development on a hillside above Old Town along the route of the Town Lift, and worked through the Park City Heights and Utah Film Studio applications and the 2014 General Plan update. He joined the Legacy Mine soil roundtable in 2023 and chaired the city's appeal panel in 2024 and 2025 before Dickey tapped him for the commission seat.

Dickey offered a direct endorsement. "His experience and steady perspective will be a real asset to our planning commission, and I'm excited to welcome him back," the mayor said. The Park City Rotary Club named Strachan its 2024 Volunteer Citizen of the Year.

Strachan himself has been clear-eyed about what the commission now faces. Reflecting on a Park City Mountain lift appeal he attended from the public gallery in 2021, he told the City Council during his appeal panel interview the following year: "The hearings now are more intense and more controversial than they used to be when I was on commission... but there's more at stake."

With two additional seats on the commission still vacant and a pipeline of resort-adjacent entitlement decisions ahead, the standard Strachan sets for public recusal disclosures will be scrutinized closely by residents already tracking how City Hall manages competing interests in a town where the ski industry and municipal governance share the same small rooms.