BEAVER -- Developers won conceptual approval for a gated ski-resort community with million-dollar homes and have six months to submit blueprints, engineering and environmental studies.

"We're happy to be moving forward," said Craig Burton, a principal for CPB Development LC of Holladay, who is managing the project for a group of unidentified investors.

The investors plan to turn bankrupt Elk Meadows ski area, which closed four years ago, into a private club with a Jack Nicklaus-commissioned golf course and other development totaling $3.5 billion -- seven times the total property value of rural Beaver County.

Elk Meadows, 18 miles east of Beaver, is a collection of private parcels inside national forest land where the wind-swept peaks of the Tushar mountain range top 11,000 feet in elevation.

Burton said he was offering to buy out owners of about 65 condominiums at Elk Meadows and wanted to demolish their units for expensive mountain homes. He said he also has secured rights to some 600 acres of private land around nearby Puffer Lake to add to the 1,400-acre ski area.

The Beaver County Planning and Zoning Commission voted 4-1 to give initial approval Wednesday to the proposed Mount Holly Club.

The approval came with a laundry list of conditions, including studies of water availability, wildlife habitat and transportation before planners said they'd vote on whether to endorse the development. The Beaver County Commission will have the final say on whether the resort can be built.

Condo owners and Beaver residents are upset they won't get to use the new ski area. They'd have to pay hefty fees and millions of dollars for a mountain home to join the club.

"I don't want to see it," said Clay Thorton of Midvale, one of the Elk Meadows condo owners. "It's our little piece of paradise and now we're getting fenced out."

"For 35 years this has been a public ski resort," said Alan Bradshaw of Salt Lake City, who argued that terms of an original lease for the ski area required it to stay open to the public.

County Attorney Von Christiansen said that dispute would be up to a court to decide.

Claudia Condor, water-rights administrator for Rocky Mountain Power owner PacifiCorp, said the utility was worried that development could cut flows to its hydropower plant in Beaver Canyon.

"These are large issues and we want to go on record as having concerns," Condor said.

Planning Commissioner Dennis Miller, who cast the lone dissenting vote, said developers "must do it right or not at all. We need an environmental plan, including a water study."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D4.