These luxury condos are pushing the limits on sustainability: How developers are creating a new playbook 

By Anna Robertson, MT2030 Board Member

Luxury living is a staple in mountain communities, with second homeowners retreating to the mountains to enjoy the slopes. 

These homes often have a huge environmental impact – not just because of their typically large size, but because of the luxury amenities that have become expected by high-end clientele.

But what if it didn’t have to be this way? A team of sustainability-minded developers in Park City, Utah recently challenged themselves to see whether they could push the envelope on sustainability within luxury homes – and take those learnings to affordable housing projects and luxury properties in other mountain towns.

“Our goal was to see how far you could go with a luxury project,” Tony Tyler, developer for Columbus Pacific Development told Mountain Towns 2030 during a tour of the properties. 

The Challenge: Maximum Sustainability, Zero Compromise 

Brian and Kirsten Shirken are Park City residents with a passion for sustainability and community engagement, as active philanthropists, donors, and supporters of the Park City Community Foundation and Mountain Towns 2030, among other organizations.

As co-founder of Mountain Pacific Development, Brian Shirken brings that passion into his development projects. Several years ago, he began development on a plot of land near the Canyons Ski Resort in Park City with the goal of building six luxury condominiums that could meet the needs of the high-end second homeowner luxury market while also achieving sustainability excellence.

After about two years of building and over four years in development with Tyler at the helm, the result is “Elevation at Canyons,” six spectacular duplex townhomes at over 5,000 square feet each. The ski-in, ski-out properties feature five bedrooms, five bathrooms and 2-car garages, selling at $7.5-$8.5 million each – while also becoming LEED-certified and some of the most sustainable luxury properties on the market.  x

To that end, each home includes: 

The process: Building some of the most sustainable luxury homes in Park City

One of the first considerations around sustainability was simply the orientation of the homes to take into account sun exposure, while also providing a beautiful mountain view. 

Small design tweaks and features helped offset solar exposure which could heat the house, such as a simple nine-foot overhang over the south-facing balconies, for example. 

Energy efficiency was a top priority. The team installed Cascadia’s highest-performing, triple paned windows and heavy insulation, with leak testing coming in at a very low 0.03. The heat pump air circulation system provided the necessary air flow for a tightly sealed home. 

Materials were sourced locally wherever possible – stone from Brown’s Canyon; furniture from Utah; cabinetry, doors, and dry wall from nearby Idaho; and even the wood hiding behind the walls sourced from Montana. 

“No one will ever know about those little things,” Tyler said, but they still make a difference.  

Measuring sustainability: Sorting through the certifications 

Key to the project was measuring the impact through third-party certifications. 

First, the development was designed to exceed the Utah Energy Conservation Code by 49%. Then there were several certifications they explored:

  1. National Green Building Standards: A broad brush-stroke standard from the Department of Energy that focused mostly on energy efficiency and renewables.
  2. Passive House: The most rigorous certification for single-family homes with an assumption that the impact of the home should be zero.
  3. LEED Certification: An objective score-based system that compares your home to similar building sites. 

While these projects easily achieved the National Green Building Standards, the other two certifications were more challenging. 

One popular ski home feature challenged their viability for the Passive House certification: the fireplace. Passive Homes cannot have any opening to the exterior, so any fireplace would disqualify the property, which was a feature the team felt was essential to the luxury homeowner. (The homes have two gas fireplaces.)


Even though they couldn’t qualify, Tyler said, they worked to incorporate the main qualifications for Passive Homes with a focus on insulation. (Interestingly, some of the few homes that survived in the Pacific Palisades fire were Passive Homes because embers were not able to get into the structures.) 

The homes were able to achieve the strict LEED certification standards, but fell short of the LEED Platinum goal, in part due to luxury home features like the hot tub, even though they sourced one of the most efficiently designed models locally produced by Bullfrog Spas. 

They also lost LEED points for diversion of waste during construction. Miraculously, the team tracked every dumpster that went off property and tried to recycle every piece of material possible – unheard of in the construction industry. While they produced far less overall waste than they had anticipated – 23,000 pounds versus 60,000 pounds – the amount that could be diverted via recycling was disappointingly low, at only 2,800 pounds of the 23,000 pounds of waste. 

Ultimately, they scored a 72 out of 110 points in the LEED certification process, with 80 points required to certify as a LEED Platinum project. 

Lessons learned: The good, bad, and ugly 

“There are a lot of lessons learned – both good and bad – that will help drive future projects,” Tyler said.  

The biggest and easiest takeaway is focusing on improving energy efficiency. “Just changing the insulation performance, you will dramatically impact the energy efficiency of the home,” Tyler said. “It doesn’t have to be huge changes.”

For example, the team has applied their learnings immediately to an affordable housing project in the Canyons Ski Resort area, Skyview, and has achieved an 18% improvement on efficiency beyond current code by improving insulation, window performance, building orientation, and creating an all-electric building. “For the most part, it’s going to be a very efficient building overall,” Tyler said.

The harder nut to crack was the mechanical and HVAC systems, which cost more than traditional systems and requires more specialized maintenance going forward. 

Bigger picture, the most challenging part of the project were increased costs tied to sustainability and the lack of a single standard or playbook. “You have to research each individual part of the process,” Tyler said – a problem which the team hopes to help solve by open sourcing their experience. 

Tyler will be sharing more details and data about their materials and efficiency improvements at the Mountain Towns 2030 Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho this October 2026.

With respect to cost, Tyler estimated sustainability added about $150-$200 a square foot to the project but will provide lower costs in the long term, given the efficiency improvements and lower energy costs. 

“We were willing to make less money to create a demonstration project that could be open sourced about the research and solutions we came up with,” Shirken said. The hope is that policy changes and scaling sustainability solutions will lower those costs in the future. 

The other learning was around consumer behavior and education. Although sustainability was a nice-to-have for homeowners, it was critical that sustainability didn’t require any sacrifices in terms of design, features, or performance – and in fact that it provided some benefit to the homeowner. Many buyers aren’t aware about the health implications or financial savings tied to a more sustainable home – for example, one homeowner immediately replaced the induction range with a gas stove, despite the link between gas stoves and asthma and cancer.

“In order to resonate with the demographic that appreciates the sustainability and environmentally friendly features, it has to have a net positive impact to them elsewhere,” Tyler said. The key benefit to homeowners was lower operating costs – thousands of dollars a year less than other similar properties.  

“These buildings will perform significantly better than the same size townhome elsewhere in the community, or than their other homes, so the carrying cost for an owner is materially lower,” Tyler said. 

This impressive and ambitious project would never have been completed without the leadership and vision of the Shirkens, along with Tony Tyler and their dedicated team. Their willingness to pursue bold ideas, invest in innovative solutions, and demonstrate what is possible has created a powerful example for the industry. 

We hope this project will inspire other developers to recognize that ambitious, climate-forward development is not only achievable, but also practical, replicable, and beneficial for communities everywhere.