It’s getting to be a bad habit, attending public hearings on bad ideas.
For years, Kamas has largely escaped the development boom. There have been a few larger projects like High Star Ranch, and Francis has never met a subdivision proposal it doesn’t like, but in general the growth has been sort of incremental. The absorption rate is slow. It’s happening, and residents definitely feel the differences, but it’s been somewhat gradual. It’s a different sort of place where the grocery store parking lot is packed with Rivians and F-350s parked side by side.
I knew it had gone over the edge a couple of years ago when I was in the auto parts store. I was getting an oil filter for an 80-year-old Farmall tractor, and the guy at the next stool at the counter was ordering brake parts for a Ferrari.
Kamas Valley now enjoys a rush hour with construction vehicles pouring out of places like Victory Ranch and Tuhaye in the afternoons, and a morning flow of construction traffic toward Kamas about equal to the flow of Kamas residents driving into Park City for work.
So we’re getting traffic congestion and a little smog and all the other great things that we used to think we were immune from, or only inflicted on others.
But the buzzards are circling. The latest bad idea to go to a public hearing is the proposal to incorporate a new town called West Hills. The name is slightly better than “East Village,” though West Pillage seems more appropriate.
The proposal is to take around 3,200 acres of mostly hillside land and create a new town. A couple property owners there have pushed the idea, after finding that the county zoning in place when they bought their property actually means what it says.
It’s grazing land. If you don’t like the zoning, and can’t get it changed, well, Utah being Utah, there is always an out. The state Legislature, which doubles as a Realtors’ convention, has made it shockingly easy to incorporate a new town. When the developer incorporates a new town, the developer gets to write his own zoning ordinances. What could possibly go wrong? Hideout.
The process is under the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, where they assigned this proposal to a guy who appears to be almost old enough to get a drivers license. They hired somebody’s cousin to do a feasibility study, and like so many consultant studies, when they are hired to find feasibility, they will find it.
In the case of West Hills, the new town is financially viable, according to the study accepted as revealed truth by the Lieutanant Governor’s Office. So it advanced to a public hearing. That initiates a brief process of adjusting the proposed boundaries, and then the whole thing goes to an election in November.
Only people who live within the boundaries of the proposed new town get to vote. They somehow managed to find 174 residents, though that count included several badgers and a coyote or two. Sorting out the children and badgers who aren’t registered voters, the election will probably be determined by the votes of fewer than 100 people.
Residents of the Garff Ranches area, who have gone to considerable inconvenience to avoid neighbors, seemed pretty hostile to the plan. Residents of the surrounding area, which will get the impact of traffic, school capacity, and dilution of other services don’t get to vote on it. Fire service is already stretched very thin in the South Summit area. Throwing a new patch of suburban sprawl into the mix will only make it worse.
The feasibility study concluded the new town is financially viable because there will be 160,000 square feet of new retail space built and fully occupied within two years. The new town will be flush with sales tax money. Man, I want a taste of what they’re drinking.
I spent a little time with Google Earth measuring existing retail space in Kamas. Not counting the car repair places or offices, there’s around 100,000 square feet of retail in Kamas now. The grocery store and hardware store total about 55,000. The rest is spread out along Main Street, with nearly 10,000 square feet that has been vacant for a couple of years.
I’m trying to figure out what could possibly fill another 160,000 feet within two years. I can’t think of anything that could possibly work.
The hearing was in full pitchforks-and-torches mode with a room full of people who know their way around a pitchfork. It’s further complicated because the only flat ground in West Hills that could accommodate the proposed commercial is the portion of the Ure Ranch that the county has called the “opportunity zone” even though it was optioned with open space bond money.
The two County Council members at the hearing didn’t seem very interested in the incorporation idea, and maybe the opportunities are going to be limited.
The whole thing seems like a spectacularly bad idea. It may make it to the election in November, and we should never underestimate the power of bad ideas around here. If they install a monument to Spanish American War Veterans, maybe MIDA will come in and pay for it all.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.