SUBLETTE COUNTY – The Sublette County Planning & Zoning Board will review a conditional-use permit application at its meeting on Thursday, Jan. 18, that only hints at owner Joe Ricketts’ larger plans for a luxury resort near Bondurant.

This CUP application addresses one distinct 10.1-acre parcel’s approved uses; it is attached to the recreational services’ resort rezoning won by Ricketts’ team in previous processes that do not reveal the big picture of the resort project’s scope.

Still, a closer look at Ricketts’ CUP application coming before the Planning & Zoning Board this week gives clues to his larger plans for his private guest ranch and resort along Upper Hoback Road. It includes Ricketts’ desire for “a private driveway” and an all-new private road to the resort off Highway 191.

The proposed underground facility, labeled Jackson Fork Parking Garage, is a 200-foot by 116-foot structure– 23,200 square feet – facing away from Upper Hoback Road with a landscaped porte cochere entry and “welcome center.”

The welcome center is depicted as a large lodge-style building facing Forest Service public lands with a small garage entry to the rear.

As drawn, the facility crosses the existing 10.1-acre property’s boundary line. Maps incorporate a new “proposed boundary line adjustment.” A map also shows the “future private access road road” connecting to the “northern resort property access point.”

‘Jackson Fork Parking Garage’

The CUP application is based on “permitted agriculture uses” for the 10-acre Agriculture-1 (A-1) parcel, submitted to the county planning office last year by Mike Jackson of Rio Verde Engineering.

The first legal Jan. 18 agenda item asks for a “determination of similar use.”

The second seeks board and then county commissioners’ approval of Ricketts’ application to build a “subterranean industrial parking facility with an ancillary ‘ranch and resort welcome center’” and valet parking for 100 vehicles.

“(T)his facility will accommodate a portion of the required parking for the first phase of the resort project,” according to the public notice.

On Dec. 11, 2023, on behalf of Jackson Fork Ranch, Jackson wrote to county planner Dennis Fornstrom requesting official confirmation that the county’s A-1 approved conditional use of an industrial parking facility “is a similar use” to that of the planned “resort parking facility.”

“Said (CUP) application references ‘industrial parking facility’ throughout; however, the proposed facility will be utilized specifically for resort and Jackson Fork Ranch guests/ employees,” the letter says. “Please confirm that the subject Resort Parking Facility is a similar use as currently defined as ‘Industrial Transportation Parking Facility.’”

‘Private driveway’

Jackson submitted the CUP application for the small parcel with direct access to Upper Hoback Road on Oct. 30, 2023, and Fornstrom accepted it three weeks later on Nov. 21.

“(JFR) currently holds property zoned RS-1 on which a resort is actively being designed. In connection with the project, JFR will be installing a private driveway entirely on its own property from Highway 191 to the rezones resort site,” the application says.

The “private driveway” is actually the road planned for all JFR resort construction, guests and employees to and from Highway 191, by the Hoback River bridge near the Bondurant Post Office, it says.

JFR would build and use this “private driveway” to link all of its traffic to the industrial parking facility and keep it off the county road, it says, “to lessen the traffic impact to neighbors in the valley.”

The CUP application states that the “subterranean industrial parking facility” is part of that plan – “to accommodate a portion of the required parking for the first phase of the resort project.”

“The resort operation plan is designed in such a way to keep nearly all vehicular traffic away from the resort property and off the Upper Hoback Road,” it says.

Resort and transient guests would leave their vehicles outside the large underground parking facility for 100 valet parking spaces and guests and employees would travel between the “welcome center” and resort in a “resort-sanctioned vehicle or shuttle bus.”

The parking structure with a façade would be 176 feet from Upper Hoback Road and two-thirds of the way up the resort’s entrance, maps show.

Offsite

Expanding parking at the resort itself “would not be advantageous,” it says.

One more water well and one septic system will serve the subterranean facility, it adds.

“Therefore the ranch is desirous of building this industrial underground parking facility to not only augment required parking for the resort but also effectively initiate the resort operation plan.

The facility would create approximately four jobs for valet and shuttle drivers.

It would transfer all the construction and resort traffic to the private ranch driveway – easing the burden on neighbors, it says.

“Removing traffic from the Upper Hoback County Road will lessen such impacts (‘noise, odor, particulate emissions and hazards’) to the landowners along such road,” it says. “The overall impact will be the same as no additional traffic will be created.”

However, the proposed private road will only divert all of the vehicles and equipment expected during ongoing construction and later, resort operations.

The P&Z Board will decide, Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. in the Sublette County Commissioners Meeting Room, whether to recommend the CUP request. Next, the application goes before Sublette County commissioners at their Feb. 6 meeting.