A private developer wants part of Yosemite. Can it happen?

A private developer has its eye on one of America’s oldest and most iconic national parks.

Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a Las Vegas-based real estate investment firm with upward of $2.8 billion in assets, wants to build a road through part of Yosemite National Park to connect one of its properties to a major thoroughfare.

In exchange, the firm is offering the National Park Service “an environmentally sensitive property of choice within the State of California,” according to a company statement shared with USA TODAY.

Here’s what visitors should know about the proposal and what it could mean.

The land in question is along the western edge of Yosemite near Big Flat Oak Road (Highway 120), a major access road for the park.

Kingsbarn owns a roughly 83-acre property just outside the park’s border, known as Hazel Green Ranch. The company said it hasn’t nailed down plans for the land yet, but “believes the highest and best use will be a development similar to plans created by the property’s former owner, which included a lodge and cabins built in a sustainable and environmentally friendly fashion.”

The company’s statement notes the property is “just a few hundred feet” from Big Flat Oak…

Original source: https://www.usatoday.com/travel/