Leaders from Park City and Summit County on Tuesday are poised to hold another discussion about the prospects of the state hosting a Winter Olympics, the second time in two months they will gather in the same room to address the topic.
The Park City Council and the Summit County Council are scheduled for a joint meeting with the Games as one of the agenda items. The two elected bodies in the middle of February also met jointly to address the Winter Olympic efforts. The Games were the sole item discussed at the earlier meeting, but other topics are also scheduled to be addressed at the meeting on Tuesday. It is not clear how much time the elected officials will spend on the Games efforts.
The meeting on Tuesday, though, will continue several months of stepped-up activity related to the Winter Olympics, including the earlier meeting, the commemorations marking the 20th anniversary of the 2002 Winter Olympics and the participation of Park City-linked athletes in the Games in China.
The Salt Lake City-Utah Committee for the Games, which is the group that is leading the bid efforts, is not scheduled to present at the meeting on Tuesday after the leadership of that organization was heavily involved in the earlier meeting.
Chris Robinson, the chair of the County Council, said he wants the elected officials at the upcoming meeting to discuss the concept of creating an overarching statement regarding the Olympics that can be provided to the communities, perhaps via a compact, a set of objectives, a mission statement or a set of guiding principles.
One of his objectives is to “make the Games a catalyst for good.” He said, as an example, infrastructure could be improved should an Olympics be awarded.
“Use the Games as a catalyst for advancing some of our shared projects or solving problems,” he said.
Robinson also compared the earlier Olympic era to today, saying the Park City area at that time was not as well known as a tourism destination. Nowadays, he said, Park City-area residents are fatigued with events. Some see there being “too many people” and a “lot of congestion,” he said.
“We’re on the map. We don’t need to get on the map,” Robinson said.
City Hall and the County Courthouse are both important players in the Olympic efforts. Three major competition venues — Park City Mountain Resort, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park — are identified on the concept map of a Games. The Park City area would also be crucial to the transportation, security and celebration plans. The area played a similar role in the Games of 2002.
The United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee in late 2018 selected Salt Lake City as the bid city for a future Winter Olympics. The Games of 2030 or those of four years later appear to be possibilities. It is not clear when the International Olympic Committee will make a host-city selection for the 2030 event, but it is expected the Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization will soon turn its attention to that decision with the Games of 2022 closed.
The leaders in Park City and Summit County, meanwhile, will likely engage the public in discussions about the Olympic efforts in coming months. There was talk at the earlier meeting about the desire for polling to gauge the level of interest in hosting a second Games. City Hall and the County Courthouse are also anticipated to conduct some sort of public outreach, but details and a timeline are not known.
The meeting on Tuesday is scheduled at 8:30 a.m. at the Marsac Building. The meeting will be broadcast online as well. More information about attending is available on the City Hall website, parkcity.org. The direct link to the meeting is: parkcity.org/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/38645/15.
Other topics that are scheduled to be addressed by the elected officials include housing, transportation and sustainable tourism.