The Kingdom Trails Network Capacity Study has taken home another award: the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association (NNECAPA) 2023 Project of the Year! This is the third time this project has been recognized for its important contribution to community and recreation planning in the Northeast.

Kingdom Trails is a premiere mountain biking destination near Burke, Vermont that attracts over a hundred thousand visitors annually and generates millions of dollars in economic spending in adjacent communities. This popularity has brought distinct challenges, and these same communities are now encountering traffic, overburdened resources, and conflicts with private landowners.

Kingdom Trails Association hired SE Group, in collaboration with Stantec, to address these capacity issues and enhance the network’s positive impact on host communities.

Robust public engagement was pivotal to the success of this project. There were 15 focus group meetings, 950 responses to the visioning survey, over 300 post-ride surveys, and more than 200 people at the open house. The top-rated project goal was identified as, “relieving the pressure and stress currently being placed on landowners, communities, and roads by planning for managed growth consistent with and respecting the quality of life in the communities.”

Kingdom Trails Association (KTA) Executive Director, Abby Long, says “We’ve gotten to a great place, seen results from growth, and seen we need to make some adjustments, and this process is the start of that. To get us on the path towards balance.”

For more details on the study, please visit the project’s Storymap:

http://www.kingdomtrails.org/networkcapacity

Pictured: Gabby Voeller, Senior Community Planner (left)

SE Group’s Claire Humber and Gabby Voeller presented at the Urban Land Institute’s Recreation Development Council (RDC) meeting in November 2023 alongside Darla Callaway from Design Workshop and Mark Baker from Wood + Partners.

The RDC is a group of developers, owners, and operators of resort projects and vacation homes in recreation-oriented communities, along with consultants who have partnered with these groups to design and implement their most notable projects.

The panel discussed the ever-increasingly complex intersection of resort development and community planning. Claire Humber opened the panel conversation with these remarks:

“What does community planning have to do with resort development? Increasingly, the answer to that question is everything. While there may have been a day when our resorts existed as islands of escape, supported by a small community down the road, built up around the gas station at the corner and visited primarily during a specific time of year, today’s resorts are thriving four-season communities. The lines have been blurred, and the challenges amplified. Communities are experiencing endless issues related to crowding, traffic, affordable housing, and the list goes on. For the development community, building projects within these communities is getting harder, more complex, and frustrating. So why are we here? As planners we work on both sides of this divide. Our goal today is to share some emerging tools and trends within this increasingly complex, “interconnectedness of all things” world of resort community planning, and some case studies that have harnessed new ways of thinking toward positive outcomes – a public/private “win-win.”

Some key takeaways from the conversation:

• The most successful development projects understand a community’s key priorities and align with town comprehensive plan goals.
• Developers and town staff should seek more opportunities for collaboration early and often throughout project planning, permitting, and construction.
• Going above and beyond typical community outreach and engagement efforts can lead to better outcomes for all stakeholders.

SE Group has over 60 years of experience working with ski resorts, communities, and developers at hundreds of ski areas around the world. We understand the complexities of resort planning and development, alongside the opportunities and impacts it creates for local communities.

Ski Areas and Mountain Resorts. We work to maximize opportunities and value, while creating extraordinary experiences at ski areas and mountain resorts—large and small.

Communities. We work with communities to envision and articulate their unique character, values, goals, and commitments.

Developers. From concepts and outreach to construction and operations, we leverage our deep expertise, decades of experience and insight, and key relationships to create the right solution for successful developments.

We are excited to continue these important conversations with our clients.

About

Claire Humber is the Director of Resort Planning at SE Group. Claire was elevated to the American Society of Landscape Architect’s (ASLA) Council of Fellows in 2022. This prestigious nomination is the result of three decades of making landscape architecture central to the comprehensive designing and planning of mountain resorts and recreation destinations. Claire joined SE Group in 1991 and has been driving the evolution of the ski industry ever since. Once seen as single-sport winter destinations, Claire has led SE Group’s work to help transform ski resorts into thriving year-round outdoor recreational destinations. The results have created financially sustainable, ecologically sensitive, and resilient businesses that are catalysts and engines of economic development.

Gabby Voeller is a Senior Associate in Community Planning at SE Group. Gabby is a multi-faceted planner with a passion for helping clients solve the most complex problems facing their communities. She applies her broad technical and analytical skills to all aspects of community planning. She approaches projects with a mind geared toward seeking out innovative and engaging solutions that move communities closer towards their vision and goals. Gabby has widespread knowledge and experience managing multi-modal transportation planning, community planning, and development projects. She joined SE Group in 2016.

SE Group is excited to welcome Dayton Crites, Senior Outdoor Recreation Planner, to our team!

For the past decade, Dayton has worked as a designer and a planner in both the public and private sector. From regional landscape analyses to detailed streetscape designs, his focus has always been on building better places for people. His experience includes numerous built projects and award-winning plans across the country, including Vermont Planners Association Plan of the Year for the Walkable Middlesex Village Study and the 2018 Silver National Planning Achievement Award for the Cache County Trails Master Plan.

Dayton is passionate about his work, having overseen the development of community bike parks, recreational trail systems, active transportation plans, and other recreation planning projects in Vermont, Maine, Utah, and Texas. He is a creative and strategic planner. As a visual thinker, he constantly strives to make the complex clear, and develop plans that foster collaboration and guide implementation. Trained as a landscape architect and practicing as a planner, Dayton brings multidisciplinary thinking to all his projects.

Dayton says, “I’m incredibly fortunate to find myself working with a talented group of planners and designers who all share a common passion for the value of outdoor recreation. There’s never a dull day at work when I’m working hard to help realize visions and turn big ideas into trail networks, beautiful streetscapes, and inspiring resorts.”

Dayton grew up between California, Texas, and Utah, and chose to relocate his family to Vermont in 2019. He is a leader in the Montpelier, VT mountain bike scene, serving as the Treasurer of the Montpelier Area Mountain Bike Association. You can find him throughout the Green Mountains stringing together lost roads and flow trails into all day adventures on his bike or teaching his children to ski the east. A passionate believer in outdoor spaces, he’s always looking for an opportunity to be inspired and share that inspiration with others.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UC Santa Cruz and a Master of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning degree from Utah State University. He is a certified planner by the American Planning Association.

At SE Group, we help clients create extraordinary experiences and enduring value through strategy, permitting, planning and design. Everything we do is rooted in a genuine desire to help our clients create places that provide a high quality of life and an exceptional experience for community residents and visitors alike. By leading, listening, inspiring, and collaborating, we build deep, enduring relationships with clients and communities, together accomplishing great things.

SE Group – the value of experience.

SE Group is thrilled to receive the 2023 Premier Award for Client Satisfaction! This award from PSMJ Resources, Inc. honors firms in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry that deliver an outstanding client experience.

We are fortunate to work with our clients to create great outdoor spaces and enrich people’s lives through the power of outdoor recreation. As trusted partners, advisors, and champions for our clients, we bring the value of experience to help implement a strategic vision and deliver exceptional projects that positively impact their communities.

At SE Group, we always view our work through a collaborative lens. Whether it’s our inquisitive approach to client communication, our integrated internal process, or our collaborations with individuals and organizations offering the specialized services our clients need, we know that the most successful projects are those that benefit from the passion and expertise of many.

This award is particularly meaningful because it reflects direct feedback from our clients. They share our passion for enabling people to deepen their connections to nature and the outdoors through recreation.

• “I want to thank you and the team, again, for an outstanding project process and understanding of our needs. The product is one to be proud of, and I hope we will be able to continue on together in implementing the next phase.” – Vermont State Parks
• “SE Group provided invaluable counsel and expertise as we transitioned from planning to implementation…We are ready!” – Bogus Basin Resort
• “I commend SE Group for keeping this process continually moving forward. Some of the best planning work that I’ve seen.” – City of Aspen, Colorado

We are grateful for the trust our clients place in us. We look forward to continuing these partnerships for many years to come.

SE Group staff pictured: Travis Beck, Director of Environmental Services (center) and George Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer (second from left)

SE Group is excited to share a major terrain expansion of the iconic Deer Valley Resort nestled in the Wasatch Mountains in Park City, Utah. The project is led by a landmark partnership between Extell Development Company and Alterra Mountain Company.

SE Group designed and planned the expanded terrain and seamless connectivity between the two resort areas. Chris Cushing led the master planning, which included flagging and field fitting each ski run. This design work honors his father, one of the principal designers of historical Deer Valley, and the namesake of Cushing’s Cabin at the resort.

The project features:

• 3,700 acres of new ski terrain, nearly doubling Deer Valley’s skiable terrain with 16 new lifts and a dual-stage 10-passenger gondola.
• A luxury alpine village (formerly named Mayflower Mountain Resort) with world-class lodging including 800 hotel rooms and 1,700 residential units, along with restaurants, retail, and a recreation center.
• New traffic access to Deer Valley from US Route 40 with convenient parking within or near the new alpine village. Together with existing portals, the resort will now offer 270 degrees of public access, helping reduce ski traffic congestion in the area.
• A partnership with Utah Open Lands to create the Forty-Fifth Star Conservation preserve with over 3,100 acres of wildlife and flora habitat and over 50 miles of public hiking and biking trails.
• Workforce housing within a half-mile of the alpine village core totaling 660 new residences, including apartments, townhomes, and dormitories.
• Environmental remediation to provide clean and compliant properties for future owners and guests.
• A community foundation funded by resort reinvestment fees to support environmental, recreational, educational, and cultural endeavors to benefit the land and local community.

SE Group is honored to be part of the team designing the next chapter of this industry leading ski resort.

For additional information, visit Deer Valley’s Expanded Excellence website: Home – Deer Valley | Expanded Excellence

We are proud to announce that the Kingdom Trails Network Capacity Study has taken home another award: the Vermont Planner’s Association 2023 Project of the Year!

This Network Capacity Study stands out as one of our favorite recent projects because its unique challenges were so well suited for SE Group’s strengths and services: recreation planning, visitation/use analysis, economic development, land planning, and community engagement.

Kingdom Trails are a premiere mountain biking destination that attracts over a hundred thousand visitors annually and generates millions of dollars in economic spending in adjacent communities.  However, this popularity has brought distinct challenges, and these same communities are now encountering traffic, overburdened resources, and conflicts with private landowners.

Kingdom Trails Association retained SE Group, in collaboration with Stantec consulting, to address some of these capacity issues and enhance the network’s positive impact on host communities. The year-long planning process and capacity analysis centered on a robust engagement process that focused on developing alignment between residents’ and visitors’ interests – key given the trails’ access agreements with private landowners. The recommendations identify strategies to improve information access, disperse users, enhance road crossings, and develop more visitor support infrastructure such as a new Welcome Center and rider shuttle service.

For more details on the study, please visit the project’s Storymap: http://www.kingdomtrails.org/networkcapacity

SE Group had a strong showing at the 2023 Vermont Public Places Awards ceremony in May, taking home 3 of the 7 awards available.

Creating public spaces that enrich communities through connections to the outdoors is the foundation of SE Group’s work. That’s why we are particularly proud of these awards, which recognize a wide variety of project-types that promote public uses and benefits here in the backyard of our Burlington office. The VT Public Spaces Awards are hosted every other year by the Vermont Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Vermont Planners Association, the Vermont Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and the Vermont Urban and Community Forest Program.

This year’s honorees included:

• Missisquoi Valley Rail Trails Marketing, Branding, & Wayfinding Project (Honor Award), which aimed to increase trail awareness for both local residents and potential visitors, enhance wayfinding and trail information, and better connect trail activity to local businesses for the popular MVRT trail. Key project deliverables included new a logo/branding guide, a redesigned website, a signage master plan, trail maps, and an interactive mobile app. The Path Less Pedaled also produced a video to explain the project and highlight this excellent recreational resource – be sure to check it out!
• The Kingdom Trails Network Capacity Study (Honor Award), a year-long planning process intended to address issues surrounding the capacity of the internationally renowned Kingdom Trails network and enhance the network’s positive impact on host communities and private landowners.
• Founder’s Hall and Rowland Courtyard at Burr & Burton Academy (Merit Award), which transforms the school campus by creating a new academic center and a central outdoor courtyard for the school community.  The courtyard successfully ties the knot amongst the upper campus buildings, celebrates the local history using marble from the Dorset Quarry as a key design element, and emphasizes green infrastructure for stormwater treatment as an educational opportunity.  The courtyard was designed to create spaces for large events and more intimately scaled spaces for smaller gatherings and outdoor lectures.  The project is a win-win as it delivers great awareness to the school community about prioritizing “green” public space over a parking lot. This project was designed in collaboration with KATO and ZGF Architects.

SE Group is proud to be a part of a team that recently won Premier Hospitality Magazine‘s 2022 Hospitality Design Award for ‘Best Event Space’ for the Rosebrook Lodge at Omni Hotels & Resorts’ Bretton Woods ski area at Mt. Washington. The 16,500 square foot lodge, which officially opened at the end of 2020, is perched near the top of the mountain, offering spectacular views across the Presidential Range. Skiers and hikers can easily access the year-round lodge via the Skyway Gondola, which SE Group also designed!

SE Group’s teams collaborated to ensure the lodge fit seamlessly within the larger Bretton Woods ecosystem, in addition to designing all of the plaza and terrace spaces. Our project partners included Bull Stockwell Allen (building design), TruexCullins Architecture + Interior Design (interior design), Horizons Engineering (civil engineering), and MWHarris Lighting Studio (light design). Congrats to all of the partners on this impressive space!

You can read more about the award in Premier Hospitality’s fall feature.  The next time you visit Mount Washington, make sure to get a meal at the Switchback Grille and enjoy this amazing setting!

On Saturday, December 17 2022, Palisades Tahoe officially opened the Base to Base Gondola, which connects Palisades Olympic Valley with Alpine Meadows. The new combined area makes Palisades Tahoe the largest resort in California, and the third largest in North America.  You can read about the gondola’s opening in the Tahoe Daily Tribune’s article.

SE Group is proud to have led the mountain planning and NEPA environmental analysis for this groundbreaking project, alongside Leitner-Poma Of America (lift design and engineering), Ascent Environmental (CEQA environmental analysis), Psomas (civil engineering), DOA Architecture (structure design), and RRC Associates (market research). During the course of this nearly decade-long project, SE Group analyzed more than 40 scenarios to connect the two valleys, ensuring a solution that was both environmentally sensitive and economically viable.

The benefits of the Base to Base Gondola are many, but crucially 1) it takes cars off of the chronically congested Highway 89; 2) it improves accessibility to the excellent beginner terrain at Alpine Meadows; and 3) it links the Alpine Meadows terrain to the robust accommodation options at Palisades Olympic Valley.