The historic Star Hotel on Park City’s upper Main St. was first used as a small home. In the early 1900’s it evolved into a Spanish revival boarding house. More recently property owners wanted to turn it into a bed and breakfast or even tear it down. KPCW’s Melissa Allison gets us up to speed on the latest plans from the current owners:
The new owners of the Star Hotel are not wasting any time in getting their plans through the approval process. Since they purchased the hotel in January, their architect, The Elliott Workgroup, created a design which both Park City Planning and the Historic Preservation Board approved in August.
Since the building is listed as significant in the city’s Historic Sites Inventory – it couldn’t be torn down. But due to the dilapidated nature of the historic hotel, Historic Preservation Planner Anya Grahn says the new owners will have to rebuild the structure.
“Reconstruction is the least preferred option for preserving our historic resources obviously," Grahn said. "Because when you reconstruct it’s mostly new material. I think one of the things we’ve learned the most about this building is, you know its such a unique building, it has such a cool history as far as starting as a cross wing house and then having this boarding house tacked on to the front and then later additions in the 70’s.”
Having so many changes occur in three different building eras raises some concern about the stability of the structure which was originally built in 1889.
Some of those questionable practices include using a retaining wall as something other than a retaining wall.
“If you can imagine that it was a cross wing house with, like a nice stone retaining wall and steps at the front of the yard," Grahn said. "And basically, they dug out behind that retaining wall and they used that as the front foundation work where Carlines was, as their foundation for the boarding house. So, its not a continuous foundation, it disappears into the hillside.”
The stones from the wall will be saved and integrated back into the new building.
Grahn said the public won’t recognize the building once it’s done.
"The building that we see today, that façade is from the 1970’s and 1976, its not the historic façade," Grahn said. "So it’s going to come back looking a lot more original than it does now, so that’s going to be a bit of a change. The applicant is going to save the first 20 feet of the building and then add a new addition behind it.”
The plans include a café, some office space and a couple of small bedrooms at the top.
As for what’s left before they can break ground – it’s not a lot.
“We are just at the point where we’re trying to finalize the square footages of the historic portion that is being preserved as well as the square footage of the new addition," Grahn said. "And we’re doing this for two reasons, one is so that we can put a financial guarantee on the property and allow them to deconstruct the building and the other is so that we can determine what the parking amount is owed and its going to be determined based on the square footage of the new portion of the building. The historic portion is not required to provide parking.”
Though the owners would love to break ground this fall, Grahn said it may be spring before they have the green light.
Previous owners Westlake Land, LLC filed a lawsuit against Park City because the city wouldn’t allow them to demolish the building. That led to the sale of the property to Hofman Properties, LC in January.
KPCW reached out to Hofman Properties, LC but no one was available.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.
