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Welcome to The Park Record’s 2022 edition of Mile Post, our annual report on key indicators in our changing community.

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In the middle of 2017, Park City leaders, it seemed, had devised a plan that would solve growth issues that by then had perplexed City Hall, a major landowner and two leading arts organizations.

Jack Thomas was the mayor of Park City at the time, and he wanted to settle the future of a swath of land known as Bonanza Park. He also sought to address the long-term status of the Kimball Art Center and the Utah headquarters of the Sundance Institute.

In a bold move that summer, Thomas, flanked by officials from the Kimball Art Center and Sundance, announced City Hall had reached a $19.5 million agreement to acquire the Bonanza Park land, located along Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard. The deal ended a private landowner’s long-disputed plan for a major residential and commercial project stretching inward from the intersection, and it launched City Hall itself into the role of pursuing an especially ambitious development.

The intention announced that day was for City Hall to develop an arts and culture district with the Kimball Art Center and the Sundance offices as the co-anchors. The district, the supporters said, would move Park City toward becoming a destination for arts and culture. It would help diversify the local economy from one that is heavily dependent on the ski industry and related sectors as well as act as a catalyst for the broader creative community, the supporters said. Thomas that day called the agreement a “miraculous moment” and a “perfect opportunity.”

More than four years later, though, there has been limited progress on the district, and it is not clear what sort of project City Hall will ultimately seek to build. Although there was widespread support in 2017 to develop a district like the one outlined by the mayor at the time, the backing has appeared to wane to a degree in the years since. The novel coronavirus pandemic and the early economic uncertainty it wrought in the community led to further questions about whether the municipal government should pursue such a significant project.

Still, Park City officials in 2020 submitted an application to the Planning Department to develop the arts and culture district, detailing a project involving buildings where the Kimball Art Center and the Sundance offices would be located. Other aspects of the application included 50 residences that City Hall would operate as rental units in the workforce or otherwise affordable housing program, upward of 12 co-op spaces, creative spaces, a food hall, artist exhibition space and event space. Computer-generated renderings of the district have highlighted the possibility of a Kimball Art Center building designed to include triangle-shaped rooflines meant to recognize the mountains of Park City.

“It really brings together and puts into action a whole range of the city’s critical priorities,” David Everitt, a deputy Park City manager and the staffer leading the efforts, said at the time of the submittal.

The application has not advanced amid increasing questions from the public and some leaders. Many are especially focused on the estimated $65 million cost. The figure is more than a year old and officials expect to update the estimate when Mayor Andy Beerman and the Park City Council better narrow the scope of the project.

The elected officials are expected to hold discussions later in 2021 about the arts and culture district, after addressing the topic in a series of difficult meetings months ago. The elected officials need to decide the scope of a project, which will drive the budget numbers. More talks are tentatively slated by the end of 2021, a timeline that could put the talks during a fall campaign season with the mayor’s office and two City Council seats on the ballot or in the period after Election Day. Additional talks are also planned with the Kimball Art Center, Sundance and other arts organizations.

City Hall would expect to recoup some of the costs through the sale of land to the Kimball Art Center and Sundance for their buildings. Housing rentals and commercial leases would also bring in revenue to the municipal government. Other funding sources could include lodging taxes, City Hall monies set aside for capital projects and transportation funds.

City Hall already cleared much of the land for the project earlier in the year, tearing down buildings that were there. The ground is now partially fenced, but the visuals of empty land at such a high-profile location are striking. Officials later in 2021 plan to allow food trucks, art installations and other art-related activities at the location. Those uses could run into the ski season.

The timeline, should the arts district project proceed as envisioned, depends on decisions by the elected officials, discussions about designs with the Kimball Art Center and Sundance and, later, the process before the Park City Planning Commission. Discussions by the Planning Commission about a project as large as the arts district can sometimes take longer than a year. Officials predict a construction start date in 2023, at the earliest.

But the work will depend on the community agreeing that City Hall has designed a masterpiece.

Arts district needs clean canvas

Park City wants to build an arts and culture district, but the canvas is not clean at the outset.

City Hall acquired land stretching inward from the intersection of Kearns Boulevard and Bonanza Drive with the intention of developing a district. It had been expected that underneath the ground would be soils contaminated during Park City’s silver-mining days, and that the municipal government would need to address the soils as part of any development there.

Park City was founded in the 19th century as a mining camp, and the industry drove the economy until it collapsed amid a sharp drop in silver prices. Even as Park City later rose again with the arrival of the ski industry, the mining-era contaminated soils and other materials remained. Park City leaders for decades have dealt with the environmental legacy of the silver mining through a variety of methods.

City Hall officials as it readied to develop the arts district, and other construction projects, devised a concept to build a facility known as a repository to store the soils. The location selected was municipal land located at the S.R. 248-Richardson Flat Road intersection, along the entryway.

Leaders previously used a repository at Richardson Flat, which dated to the mining era, but it has not been available for longer than a decade. Materials removed since then have been brought to a facility in Tooele County.

The concept of building a repository was seen as a cost-effective solution since City Hall would not be required to truck the materials to Tooele County, and officials wanted to take responsibility for the contaminants by storing them locally.

The efforts, though, earlier in the year drew a broad rebuke from the community. Critics worried about the impact on the environment and public health. It was a rare example of near unanimous disapproval of a City Hall program or policy that stretched across political, socioeconomic and neighborhood lines.

Mayor Andy Beerman and the Park City Council, bowing to the opponents, in August formally opted against proceeding with the repository. In doing so, they also wanted City Hall staffers to explore the impact of the decision on the scope and budget of municipal projects that are under consideration in locations where contaminated soils are expected to be unearthed. The arts and culture district is likely to be the highest profile of those projects.

The elected officials at the same meeting wanted talks restarted with the EPA about the storage of contaminated soils. They also requested staffers withdraw an application for a repository at the S.R. 248-Richardson Flat Road intersection that had been filed with the state Department of Environmental Quality prior to the community’s rebuke.

The repository concept became politicized during the City Hall primary election, which was held in August, with some of the candidates seeming to see the issue as a vulnerability for incumbents who are seeking reelection. It is likely a long-term solution for the storage of contaminated soils could be debated during the fall campaign after the repository concept caused such an uproar in the months before Election Day in November.

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A quiet stretch of sagebrush and hillsides flanked on three sides by highways has proven to be the unexpected focus of a development dispute between small-town Hideout and neighboring Summit County that has played out in courtrooms and public meetings since the summer of 2020.

The central issue is whether Richardson Flat will be annexed and developed — something Park City and Summit County have vigorously opposed.

The land sits south of S.R. 248 on the main entryway into Park City from the east. It is on the other side of a series of hills from the Jordanelle Reservoir and the residential growth quickly covering its banks.

Hideout is seeking to annex 350 acres of Richardson Flat to allow developer Nate Brockbank to build 600 homes along with nearly 100,000 square feet of businesses and some municipal buildings, including a new community center, which Brockbank said he would pay for. There is also room for a school.

Summit County and Park City have sued to block the plan, and several lawsuits are working their way through the court.

Summit County secured a key win in the case with the most bearing on the annexation, successfully challenging the validity of the ordinance that Hideout passed to annex the land.

The decision, though, will almost surely be appealed, prolonging the dispute.

Summit County, Wasatch County and Park City officials and residents have opposed the plan and decried it as a land grab that would exacerbate the area’s traffic, congestion and environmental problems at a time when explosive growth around the Jordanelle Reservoir threatens to do that on its own.

Hideout residents, meanwhile, voted by a 2-to-1 margin in support of the plan. Some have said the idea of a grocery store or gas station closer to their homes would be convenient.

A look at the greater region shows the location appears to make sense for development: It sits at the confluence of S.R. 248 and U.S. 40, two of the area’s major roadways. It’s largely unused by recreationists and sits vacant. And it’s on the Rail Trail, near an existing park-and-ride lot, and it apparently could be linked with relative ease to the local transit system.

But whether or not Hideout’s plans for the land will come to fruition may take years for the courts to decide.

In the meantime, Park City and Summit County plan for it to include very low density development or remain open space.

Summit County for now retains land-use authority.

Brockbank’s plan to build a new town hall is part of a larger push the Hideout side is making to refer to the development as a potential new town center, but the land is not contiguous to the town’s borders or near any of its buildings.

Hideout consists of a series of subdivision homes as well as a golf course overlooking the Jordanelle Reservoir that is separated from the site by a line of hills.

Brockbank is developing many homes there. Thousands of units are entitled around the Jordanelle between many projects, including some in Hideout.

Hideout started as a residential development that was incorporated under a state law that was quickly overturned, and it remains almost completely residential, with almost no businesses.

Town officials have said part of their desire to annex the land is to diversify the town’s tax base.

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By late July, it seemed clear which issues were likely to dominate the fall political season in Summit County.

It was certain that the mayoral race in Park City would draw significant attention, along with the contest to fill two vacancies on the City Council. The Park City Board of Education, meanwhile, had been signaling for months that it planned to ask voters to open their pocketbooks for major facility improvements. And municipal races on the East Side were also taking shape.

In August, however, the Summit County Council opted to add its own item to the election-season spotlight. Just weeks after first broaching the idea, the elected officials voted to place a $50 million bond measure on the November ballot that would fund the preservation of open space and other environmental projects throughout the county. It would be the largest bond for land preservation ever approved in Summit County. And while there’s a long history of residents in the area supporting open space bonds — most recently, Park City voters in 2018 overwhelmingly backed a $48 million measure to fund the majority of the Treasure acquisition — this is the first time Summit County itself has pursued one.

That means voters beyond Park City and the Snyderville Basin will have a say in determining the fate of the bond, and it remains unclear whether East Side taxpayers will support footing the bill for land preservation with the same amount of enthusiasm residents on the West Side have shown over the years.

The county estimates the bond would increase property taxes $40 on a primary home worth $715,000, while second homeowners or businesses would pay $73.

East Side voters could ultimately be swayed by one specific assurance from the County Council. While the funding is not earmarked for specific land acquisitions, the elected officials have said they intend to use much of the money for East Side projects, from acquiring land to securing conservation easements that would extinguish development rights on certain acreage.

In light of that, along with the growth hitting their communities, voters in Coalville and the Kamas Valley may see the bond as a prime opportunity to preserve large swaths of land before they’re turned into housing developments.

Alternatively, voters could find the dollar figure attached to the bond tough to swallow — even on the West Side, where another taxing entity, the Park City School District, is also proposing a significant tax increase.

Whichever way voters lean, the fate of the bond won’t be known until Election Day on Nov. 2.

County Councilor Chris Robinson, for one, believes the moment is right for the county to act. He told The Park Record in an August interview that time could be running out to preserve the open spaces that make this area such a special place.

“[T]here’s a lot going on, especially on the east side of the county,” he said. “… There’s a lot of development activity, and some of those important places will either not be around or be much more expensive in the future.”

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It wasn’t obvious when the drought started. It wasn’t that it didn’t rain when it was expected, it’s that the rainless days continued to pile up.

One local rancher remembered it raining in June last summer and then no more precipitation until snow in November. He remembers taking a herd to graze in a relatively unused pasture only to find it was empty. The grass grew so dry and brittle, it had blown away with the wind.

Skiers remember that November early-season snowfall as a false promise. It wasn’t the first storm of many, as hoped — it just formed a layer of snow that rotted underneath the snowpack and caused one of the deadliest years in local backcountry skiing history.

By the time the winter ended, the snowpack was around 80% of normal — not terrible, but when compounded with the lack of rain last summer, it was the makings of serious drought conditions.

Then came the spring runoff.

The Weber Basin Water Conservancy District oversees much of the water distribution in Summit County. In a normal year, its general manager says, the district stores about 220,000 acre-feet of water from snowmelt. This spring, it stored 7,300 acre-feet.

In March, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared a state of emergency due to the drought, and the situation hasn’t improved much since then. Cox has said the drought is the worst the state has faced in generations.

For local ranchers, the dry conditions could pose an existential threat. Less water means less hay to feed cows, which means farmers have to buy it on the market. And with a smaller hay crop, prices go up. Additionally, lower-quality feed means the quality and quantity of milk also falls, said one dairy rancher, and milk prices were already down.

It’s another blow to an agriculture industry in Summit County that has already experienced rapid changes and periods of hardship in recent years. But it isn’t the only industry that relies on water to survive, even if the threat the drought presents isn’t as immediate for them.

There hasn’t yet been serious talk of reducing the water allocated to the area’s ski resorts or golf courses, for instance — and indeed, new golf courses are being built near Coalville and near the Jordanelle Reservoir.

A new ski area, Mayflower Mountain Resort, is also starting to take shape on the eastern edge of Deer Valley. Its developer says it has enough water through the Jordanelle Special Service District to supply its needs, with entitlements dating back 30 years or more.

Some municipalities, however, have taken steps to conserve water as a result of shortages. Henefer enacted a six-month building moratorium in 2018, and Oakley implemented a similar measure earlier this year in the face of the current drought. That’s in contrast to the area surrounding the Jordanelle Reservoir, where the rapid pace of development has continued unabated.

“With the drought, it didn’t make a lot of sense to let people keep building,” said Oakley Mayor Wade Woolstenhulme. The city is planning to dig a well to add another source to its supply next year.

Summit County Manager Tom Fisher suggested earlier this year that county officials were considering whether the county and the state as a whole are in the midst a longer-term evolution called aridification, a gradual but consistent change to a drier climate.

County officials have announced their intention to pursue drought-friendly tactics like reducing the amount of grass that can accompany newly built homes, incentivizing homeowners to replace their lawns with less water-intensive landscaping and encouraging xeriscaping.

Though above-average snowfall this winter could end the drought, it won’t be easily forgotten. Officials say it raises concerns about the Park City area’s vulnerability to the whims of Mother Nature, especially with the threat of climate change lurking.

What happens, for example, if it eventually becomes too warm for enough snow at the resorts’ base areas? What happens if there isn’t enough water for the resorts to supplement what Mother Nature provides each winter?

Or as County Council Chair Glenn Wright put it in a meeting this fall, “Projections are, in 2050, the (Salt Lake) Valley will have a climate like Las Vegas without the wine, women and song. In 20 years, (we’re) probably still a ski resort, not a world-class ski resort. By 2050, (we’re) probably not a ski resort.”

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2021 marked the return of the performing arts to Park City. The coronavirus pandemic swept the rug out from under such organizations as the Park City Institute, the Egyptian Theatre, Mountain Town Music and the Park City Beethoven Festival. But these local performing arts nonprofits, along with the Utah Symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival and the Deer Valley Concert Series, orchestrated the return of a full summer of performances that included blues great Robert Cray, the Beach Boys and the Park City Follies.

Park City Institute, after scheduling, postponing and rescheduling its Main Stage fall and winter lineup and its Big Stars Bright Nights summer series, took a leap of faith and kicked off the summer with Parsons Dance on July 3 at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.

The season continued without a hitch for the nonprofit, apart from the postponement of an event features author Stephanie Land due to the Parleys Canyon Fire.

“We are so proud of the diverse lineup of performances we were able to present at the Eccles Center over this past summer,” said the nonprofit’s executive director Ari Ioannides in an open letter to patrons. “Thanks to patrons like you, we were able to join us for a safe and satisfying summer of live entertainment.”

The series also featured a free performance of Americana group Upstate on July 10, as a way to thank patrons for sustaining the Park City Institute during the pandemic.

Park City Institute also partnered with the Park City Beethoven Festival for Chamber Music at the Eccles series held on Sunday afternoons.

Performances started with the music of Beethoven synchronized with Charlie Chaplin’s most famous silent film, “The Gold Rush,” and continued with other live performances by The Reverón Trio and virtuoso pianist Stephen Beus.

The series was so successful that both the Park City Institute and Beethoven Festival decided to continue their partnership through the winter, said Beethoven Festival founder Leslie Harlow.

“The Park City Institute has been really great to work with,” Harlow said. “They are really into the concerts. They are enjoying them, too.”

In addition, the Park City Beethoven Festival, which celebrated its 38th anniversary this year, presented a summer-long string of in-person performances for its Chamber Music in the Park series at City Park and the Beethoven at the Barn series at McPolin Farm.

The concerts were held with one stipulation that all attendees would follow the festival’s COVID-19 protocols, said Harlow.

While the Beethoven Festival enjoyed in-person performances, the Egyptian Theatre, which had been shuttered since March 2020, also sprung to life.

The theater’s annual musical-spoof fundraiser, “Park City Follies,” opened with a string of sellout performances in the 351- seat venue.

After canceling shows every few weeks during COVID-19, the Egyptian Theatre now has an itinerary of rescheduled dates through August 2022.

“We booked our shows in reverse, meaning we started booking shows for next summer, and then scheduled the other shows closer and closer to our opening date,” Barton said.

Barton did that in case he has to cancel any more shows as the season progresses.

Mountain Town Music, the nonprofit that usually schedules up- wards of 250 free concerts in Summit County every year, found a way to help mitigate the coronavirus shutdown.

It produced the Door 2 Door concert series, which features local musicians playing live music on the back of a flatbed trailer.

The trailer would be set up in different neighborhoods through- out the county, and people could enjoy the music while socially distancing themselves.

This summer Mountain Town Music began booking regular performances at Main Street’s Miners Park, Park Silly Sunday Market, City Park, the Great Lawn at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, Woodenshoe Park in Peoa and on the Park City Library patio. It was also instrumental in working with the Park City Beethoven Festival for the Chamber Music in the Park series.

In addition, the nonprofit’s director Brian Richards continued to work with Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain Resort on their concert seasons.

Richards was elated to finally book live shows again.

“Getting together to experience live music is important for our well-being, and people are ready to dance,” he said.

The post Mile Post: The show goes on appeared first on Park Record.

As anyone who has seen the black, blue and purple buses and vans driving on S.R. 224 or throughout the Snyderville Basin knows, it’s a new era for public transit in the Park City area. Summit County’s High Valley Transit launched this summer after county officials decided to end their long-term partnership with City Hall on Park City Transit and instead create their own bus system with an eye toward expanding service levels in the greater Basin region. As a result of the change, Park City Transit now operates primarily within city limits.

While officials intend for the two systems to co-exist seamlessly — a rider can take a High Valley Transit bus from Kimball Junction to Park City Mountain Resort, for example, then board a Park City Transit bus to reach another destination in town — the split is nonetheless a significant shift after Park City Transit was the area’s sole provider for so long.

One of the major changes riders have seen, apart from High Valley Transit’s distinctive color scheme and a few route alterations, is an offering known as microtransit. High Valley Transit launched the service in May, allowing users in the Basin to order rides in an app, similar to Uber or Lyft. Within minutes, a van arrives at the user’s location and drives them to their destination.

In the initial months since the microtransit service got rolling, it seems to be a hit. According to data from High Valley Transit, it had served more than 26,600 passengers through mid-August, while in July, 125 people used the offering more than 20 times.

Microtransit, though, isn’t the only new wrinkle High Valley Transit is eyeing. Officials say the next step for the system, which currently extends into the East Side with a route to Kamas and Francis, could be Heber City. That’s long been identified as a need given the amount of workers who commute into the area from Wasatch County, and it could help alleviate rush- hour congestion on S.R. 248.

It’s likely that such an arrangement, which would require a partnership between Summit and Wasatch counties, is still a ways off. But Summit County officials, who have expressed a desire for High Valley Transit to eventually serve a greater portion of the Wasatch Back, seem eager to make it a reality.

“This has been a long time coming,” County Manager Tom Fisher said this spring. “… I think, within the next two years, you’re going to see some decent progress to getting transit on the ground between the two counties.”

The post Mile Post: New bus system steers into town appeared first on Park Record.

When it comes to construction and renovation it has not exactly been a quiet summer in the Park City area. As the community continues to grow, its infrastructure requires updating. While many of those improvements are still up for debate at city and county council meetings or at the state capitol, others have been underway for months. One need only drive from one end of town to the other, or from Park City west to Salt Lake City or east toward Wyoming, to see it.

S.R. 248
S.R. 248, or Kearns Boulevard as it’s known inside Park City, has been in vary- ing states of repair and construction since early July. A $2.9 million Utah Department of Transportation project includes repaving the length of the road from S.R. 224 to U.S. 40. The repaving work, as well as curb cuts to conform to federal standards for pedestrians (including the differently abled), were scheduled to be completed in late summer.

The most substantial stage of the project involved widening a 700-foot section of S.R. 248 as it curves near the intersection with Richardson Flat Road. The widening extends the road outward toward Silver Creek to accommodate a shoulder-running bus.

That bus lane could be a future component of a bus rapid transit system, which officials hope can help ease the area’s traffic problems.

UDOT is also planning to install a traffic light at the intersection of Richardson Flat Road and S.R. 248 sometime this winter.

A traffic light planned on S.R. 248 at the intersection of Browns Canyon Road is scheduled for completion this fall, as well.

S.R. 224
Summit County officials this summer took on a major repaving project in the Kimball Junction area, which included removing two inches of existing surface on everything west of S.R. 224 and repaving it.

Quinn’s Junction park-and-ride
Park City is moving forward with plans for a new park-and-ride lot at Quinn’s Junction, which would include nearly 500 stalls and may be completed in 2022. The additional bus lane made possible by UDOT’s widening work on S.R. 248, Park City officials have said, could be used to run passengers from the park-and-ride lot into town.

Other UDOT projects
According to UDOT, notable further projects recently completed or currently underway include:

• Rehabilitation of the eastbound I-80 interchange bridge from Echo Canyon Road in Emory, which should be completed by summer of 2022.

• Rehabilitation of I-80 from the Hi-Ute Ranch to Silver Creek Junction along with the Silver Creek and I-80 ramps and paving at the Silver Summit Interchange

• Pavement preservation on S.R. 302 at the Rockport State Park, including repaving the boat ramp parking lot and structural maintenance work

• Rehabilitation of the flyover ramp from northbound U.S. 40 to westbound I-80, including resurfacing of the ramp and replacement of concrete barriers

Looking ahead, the summer of 2022 does not appear to be any less busy. Work scheduled next summer includes median improvements and deck preservation on I-80, shoulder widening and rumble strip installation on the Mirror Lake Highway and retaining-wall repairs on S.R. 224 in Park City.

For more information on state, county and city transportation projects visit udot.utah.gov, summitcounty.org and parkcity.org.

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