The owner of Outlets Park City in Kimball Junction wants to make the outdoor mall a central part of surrounding properties so the entire area can “truly become a neighborhood.”
Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate is preparing to apply for a rezoning of the property at 6699 N. Landmark Drive from a town center zone to a neighborhood mixed-use zone. Singerman and Elliott Workgroup, a Park City architecture and design firm, have submitted preliminary information about the project to the Summit County Planning Department and requested a pre-application meeting with planners.
Outlets Park City — formerly known as The Tanger Outlets at Park City and The Factory Stores @ Park City — was built in 1991 and eventually expanded to nearly 324,000 square feet. Singerman has tried in the past several years to bring a Harmons grocery store to the mall as an anchor tenant, but that effort fell through.
Mixed-use zoning would provide the catalyst to redevelop the property in a way that would be consistent with the Kimball Junction Neighborhood Plan, according to a written description of the project by Elliott Workgroup.
“At this moment in time, the opportunity currently exists to re-think and redevelop the outlet mall property,” the document says. “As the properties around the outlet mall have developed, the site is now in a unique situation that abuts several multi-family uses, and also abuts hotel, traditional retail, and grocery use.”
A goal of the proposed project is strengthening the mix of uses. Under the plan, the mall’s upper lot buildings would be removed, and market rate and affordable housing units would be built there.
Other goals are enhancing community spaces and improving the visual quality of the property.
“The existing condition of the property is defined by two oversized parking lots, surrounded by regional commercial spaces that are historically focused toward outlet retail businesses,” the project description says. “As developed, the outlet mall is an auto-centric retail use and is entirely inward focused, turning its back on the surrounding uses. This inward focus currently creates a wall of buildings that deters pedestrian access to the retail from the multi-family uses located to the west of the property.”
The buildings also inhibit walkability from the multi-family housing to the grocery, retail, and transit center to the east of the property, the description says.
Citing those current conditions as detriments to creating a neighborhood, the plan calls for removing portions of buildings on the east and west of the property to open connections to the surrounding uses.
Creating a new mixed-use commercial core with enhanced communities that provide a place to shop and gather in the neighborhood also is part of the proposed plan.