The proposed $200 million Park Junction golf course resort development between Elbe and Ashford in the shadow of Mount Rainier has been put on hold due to a ruling by the Pierce County Superior Court.
The project, proposed by Park Junction LLC, would develop a 400-acre destination resort between Elbe and Ashford that would include a golf course, a conference center and a 270-room hotel, retail and other amenities.
Superior Court Judge Timothy Ashcraft earlier this month sent back a conditional-use permit to the Hearings Examiner.
“To be clear, nothing in this decision (as to the remanded issues) should be interpreted as this Court implying or directing any result,” Judge Ashcraft wrote in his decision.
According to an article in the Tacoma News Tribune, the Mount Rainier Resort at Park Junction received its conditional-use permit in 2000, subject to 100 conditions and periodic status review hearings.
In recent years, the county and opponents with Tahoma Audubon Society have questioned whether substantive progress was being made on the project, leading to the eventual establishment of milestones in late October 2020 for the project to proceed.
A milestone to create two test wetlands was deemed unmet by the Nov. 30, 2020, deadline by Pierce County Planning and Public Works, leading to a recommendation to revoke the conditional-use permit.
In May 2021, hearing examiner Stephen Causseaux sided with the county, and in July of that year issued a decision denying a request for reconsideration. The revocation decision was later appealed to Superior Court by the developers.
The court rejected Park Junction’s argument that the only relevant time frame to consider whether reasonable progress had been made was from Nov. 14, 2019, to now.
The judge added: “Likewise, the Court rejects Park Junction’s argument that only intentional, egregious acts can support a petition for revocation. While this may be the ‘norm’ for such petitions historically, nothing in the law precludes Pierce County from bringing such an action in this case.”
In sending the hearing examiner’s decision back, Ashcraft said five questions needed to be considered in “future evidentiary proceedings.”
Those questions, essentially, call for more evidence according to the news article, asking what were the milestones agreed to and were those understood; how did a wording change involving the wetlands affect that understanding; did a change in requirements “affect the ability to complete the originally agreed upon or changed milestones;” and did COVID-19 impact “the ability to complete either the original or changed milestones such that completion was impossible or impracticable?”
The judge then wrote that after those questions are answered, the final question was whether Park Junction had “a reasonable time to complete the milestones?”
“After answering these questions, the hearing examiner should then determine whether the conditional use permit should be revoked,” Ashcraft wrote.
The decision also could be appealed.
