Hotels could someday serve as the de facto bookends to a dramatic reworking of Swede Alley, a concept that would be designed to attract more visitors to stay in the Main Street core.
A committee is considering the future of the Main Street core and the municipal government recently released information about the work to date. Park City’s elected officials received a written update in the middle of August about the efforts. The discussions have covered a wide range of issues related to the potential of significant projects that, together, would remake Swede Alley.
The materials released by City Hall include a rough sketch of the possibilities for Swede Alley. The graphic, drafted by a consultant, shows a location for a boutique hotel on the north end of Swede Alley, off the Old Town roundabout.
Just south of the hotel location is ground for unspecified mixed uses, with City Hall and what has been dubbed the “Heart of Main Street” Plaza immediately south of there. A post office and grocery store are placed south of City Hall and the plaza, with a second hotel and mixed uses immediately to the south. Housing is shown off Marsac Avenue to the south.
The sketch illustrates the breadth of possibilities for Swede Alley after it has served more utilitarian purposes for decades. Swede Alley has provided much of the parking for Main Street and offers space to support the operations of the shopping, dining and entertainment strip. There are businesses fronting Swede Alley as well, but it is not a continual row of storefronts and restaurants like Main Street.
The idea of placing two hotels along Swede Alley stands out. There are a variety of lodging properties on Main Street, as well as numerous vacation rentals in surrounding Old Town, but additional options would almost certainly be seen by Main Street as boosting business prospects. If more Park City visitors were staying in the Main Street core, the thinking goes, they would choose to shop, dine and select entertainment options there.
A grocery store would also be of interest with limited options on Main Street. It would likely attract visitors to Park City and Old Town residents alike.
Another sketch, though, drops the grocery store and a second hotel to the south.
City Hall would likely encounter numerous questions if it ever pursued a remaking of Swede Alley like the one envisioned in the sketch, traffic and parking among them, along with how Main Street and Swede Alley would complement each other.
There would with near certainty be extensive discussions involving Park City leaders, Main Street businesses, Old Town residents and Parkites outside the neighborhood before the municipal government would pursue any of the ideas. Individual projects like Swede Alley hotels would also need to move through the City Hall approval process.
“At this stage in the process, the committee of merchants and residents are focused on generating creative concepts and bold ideas to share with the community this fall,” the municipal government said in a prepared statement.