This isn’t completely true. Snowbird bought property where the base would be a “promised” to donate it to the project. That’s a small drop in the bucket though.Fortunately it sounds like the people of Utah oppose the planned gondola welfare for Snowbird.
The article made a very important point:
"Even the private ski resorts that would benefit most from the project have shown no interest in investing their own money in a project that primarily benefits them."