The city of Vail and Vail Resorts announced a partnership Tuesday to develop a fourth base village at Vail Ski Area, where the resort operator planned to build its own luxury village with condos and hotel rooms a decade ago. This time, Avon-based East West Partners will develop the new base village on the 30-acre Gore Creek site.

The partnership agreement includes workforce housing and the ski resort company's agreement to drop its appeal of the city's April 2022 condemnation and eminent domain acquisition of the 23-acre East Vail property where Vail Resorts planned housing for 165 employees. The city rejected the East Vail project, citing impacts to bighorn sheep on the parcel this winter.

They call it the West Lionshead Project. It is located directly downstream from Lionshead Village and upstream from the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Cascade Village. The plan will go through a long public process with many meetings as the city, developer and resort operator work out the details of the new base village.

“Vail has always been a community and mountain committed to innovation, and this new village at Fourth Base marks the next chapter of innovative partnerships that will ensure Vail remains the premier vacation community in North America and one of the best mountain towns anywhere ” said a statement from Chris Frampton, managing director of East West Partners, which has built dozens of projects in Vail, Beaver Creek, Eagle, Denver, Snowmass Village, Steamboat Springs, California, South Carolina, Hawaii and Utah.

The Vail City Council unanimously approved the new partnership and master planning process Tuesday and pledged to prioritize the West Lionshead village project.

It's not the first time the Vail City Council has approved a major project on the resort company's West Lionshead property. In 2012, the council completed five years of planning that included more than 80 public meetings to approve Vail Resorts' plan for what was then called Ever Vail. The property houses a maintenance yard, very dated office and commercial space, a former gas station and an employee parking lot on Frontage Road. Ever Vail's plan called for a mix of 422 condominiums, hotel rooms and residential units, a commercial village, a recreation center, a spa, office space and more than 400 parking spaces.

Vail Resorts began planning for Ever Vail in 2005, and permits for the project in 2009 and 2010 expired at the end of 2020 without any work being performed on the parcel.

Vail Resorts was a different company back then. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, resort operators focused on village construction and sales of hillside condominiums. The Great Recession decimated these companies — like American Skiing Co., the former owner of Steamboat Ski Area, and Intrawest, the former owner of Copper Mountain and operator of Winter Park Ski Area. Vail Resorts introduced Epic Pass in 2008, ushering in a transformative transition away from real estate development. The idea was to avoid the debt and volatility of real estate and use third-party developers – such as East West Partners – to manage the risks of the development.