“The new housing, called Lakeside Village, would be built in phases on a 19.8-acre parcel a half-mile south of the resort. Plans call for 10 dormitories with 64 beds in each, or 384 total beds. Another 120 beds would be added from six buildings with 40 apartments.”
Tamarack Resort is located in rural Idaho, so housing is hard to come by, and expensive. According to The Lewiston Tribune, the resort is trying to change that with multiple housing projects. Tamarack Resort presented the plans to the Valley County Planning and Zoning Commission in a joint meeting on August 19th. Named Lakeside Village, the housing project would be constructed on West Mountain Road, which is about a half-mile south of the mountain’s main entrance, and would include numerous housing projects to total five hundred beds for employees. If approved, they are hoping to open the first employee housing units in the 2022-23 season. There will be ten dorms with sixty-four beds each(three hundred and eighty-four beds overall), and ten additional housing facilities with one hundred and twenty beds. Each project would be a mix of two and three-bedroom apartments with a shared living space and kitchen. The project would also include a campground with sixty parking spaces for vans and RVs that employees use for housing, and would feature restrooms and showers. Two hundred seventy additional parking spaces would be available on the site for employees, and a shuttle will transports workers to the resort. Twenty houses are currently used for hosting employees could be resold on the market if the demand is there. One concern of the project will be that the dirt road the project will be situated on is difficult to navigate and potential fire hazard, and the resort isn’t planning on paving it until the first phase is finished.
Tamarack Resort currently has seventy beds available at the resort, but only twenty-four are at the actual resort. The resort only employed three hundred and fifty people last year, but future developments and terrain expansions will likely increase that number over the next decade. Tamarack Resort first opened its lifts in 2004 and features fifty runs, seven lifts, a vertical drop of two thousand eight hundred feet, multiple terrain parks, and a brand new base lodge with various lodging options. It also is on the Indy Pass, which is one of the best season pass deals in all of the ski industry. Shoutout to Tamarack Resort for working towards tackling one of the biggest problems in the ski industry: affordable housing.
Image Credits: Skimap.org, Tamarack Resort
