UPDATE: The public hearing has been rescheduled to Dec. 1. A county spokesperson said the Park City School District had concerns about hosting a large crowd at Ecker Hill Middle School due to the pandemic. A venue for the Dec. 1 meeting has not been announced.
Members of the public will have the chance at a Wednesday hearing to weigh in on whether the Summit County Council should approve a controversial proposal to build a massive development in the southwest corner of Kimball Junction at the site of the Tech Center.
The council could take a vote that night on a request to change the land uses allowed at the site, which would permit the developer, Dakota Pacific Real Estate, to build 1,100 homes, a hotel, office buildings and commercial space.
Dakota Pacific owns 58 acres in the area. A 2008 development agreement currently limits what can be built on the land, which is west of S.R. 224 and south of Walmart, to mostly tech-related office buildings.
Supporters say the project could lead to fixes for traffic issues in Kimball Junction, but opponents counter that it would negatively impact an already congested area by adding traffic and possibly thousands of new residents. Critics have flooded the council with emails opposing the proposal and launched a petition on change.org against the plan.
The petition says only 330 residences will be lower priced for the workforce in the area and that the development could put 4,000 additional vehicles on S.R. 224, “which is already a parking lot during the ski season and during most weekends.”
“As we have not seen any plausible explanation for how this project will benefit the community that resides at or near Kimball Junction we hereby urge the County Council to DECLINE the rezoning and redevelopment application for the Dakota Pacific development project,” the petition says.
Four of the five County Council members supported the Dakota Pacific plan in concept in an informal straw poll at a meeting over the summer. One of the members in the majority, Chair Glenn Wright, wrote in a Nov. 5 guest editorial in The Park Record that global warming is threatening the future of the ski industry in Summit County, which will require economic diversification.
In addition, he said, growth trends will continue to make traffic congestion worse and a proposed Utah Department of Transportation project that would improve the situation might not get done for years.
“By creating a series of dense mixed-use neighborhoods around the county while preserving open space in the surrounding area, we can reduce the everyday carbon footprint of residents in these new developments,” Wright wrote in the editorial.
He also said the creation of developments with a wide range of affordability and economic opportunities is essential in creating a more diverse economy.
Wright said in an interview Wednesday that it’s hard to know if the hearing will sway the opponents to support the development.
“I really can’t predict that,” he said. “When we had a public hearing on it back in the early part of the year, the opinions were pretty evenly divided. Since then, we’ve had mostly negative opinions on it but not completely. We’ll see what happens.”
The county is expecting a crowd at the meeting, which begins at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and switched the location to the auditorium at Ecker Hill Middle School to accommodate public attendance. Masks are requested for all in-person attendees. Residents can also attend the meeting virtually on Zoom at zoom.us/j/772302472.
The agenda can be found at summitcounty.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_11172021-3170.
For more information or to submit written comments by Tuesday at noon, contact Kirsten Whetstone at Summit County Department of Community Development, P.O. Box 128, 60 N. Main Street in Coalville, or at kwhetstone@summitcounty.org.