Park Service Plans 15.2% Reduction in Lodging at Yosemite

Lodging at Yosemite National Park will be reduced 15.2% over 15 years under a National Park Service plan made public Tuesday.

The plan calls for reducing the number of tent cabins in the park from 426 to 150, removing most regular cabins without baths and building “economy” cottages and cabins with baths in scenic Yosemite Valley at Yosemite Lodge and in Curry Village.

Overall lodging, excluding campgrounds, would be trimmed from 1,782 units to 1,472, with all the cuts occurring in the heavily visited valley.

Under the plan, the park’s ice skating rink would be retained, showers would be provided in the campgrounds and a bar at Yosemite Lodge would be converted to a visitor lounge.

To reduce congestion in the valley, the headquarters for the hotel concessionaire and a garage and vehicle repair station would be relocated. The Park Service also would reduce the number of conventions it allows in the valley.

The Park Service estimates that these and other required changes will cost the next concessionaire $28.6 million in today’s dollars. In addition, the concessionaire would have to build housing for its employees outside the valley.

The plan was prepared as part of a bidding process for a new concessionaire to operate the park’s hotels and restaurants. The park’s contract with the Yosemite Park and Curry Co. expires in 1993.

“It looks very good,” said Judith Kunofsky, associate executive director of the Yosemite Restoration Trust, a group formed in part by environmentalists to bid for the next contract. “It responds to many of the comments that we made and the public have made.”

Her group had opposed previous park plans to build two-story motel units in the valley. She said the housing now proposed would be “more affordable and more in keeping with the flavor of Yosemite Valley.”

Though the plan does not scale back development in the valley to the level envisioned by park planners in 1980, it still reduces the number of buildings significantly, she said.

During public meetings on the plan, an environmental group had urged the Park Service to eliminate the golf course at Wawona at the south entrance to the park and the downhill skiing facility at Badger Pass. The report said these would be periodically reviewed for possible removal.