The Park City Council scheduled a special meeting for Friday to hear from staff about the results of their public outreach efforts for the Big Starts Bright Nights venue change. Melissa Allison has more:
It’s not been an easy season for the Park City Institute. After hearing from the Deer Valley Resort they’d no longer provide a venue for their annual summer concert series that is now in the midst of its 15 year, Executive Director Teri Orr got busy real fast to locate a new home for the event.
After running into one dead-end after another, Orr reached out to the city for help and they came up with Quinn’s Junction for the majority of performances, with one scheduled at the City Park early on.
After seeing how smoothly everything went, both the Institute and the city staff approached council to request they move the remaining six performances to the City Park.
Council was open to the idea but told staff they wanted more public outreach before making a decision that would impact the neighboring residents.
Council agreed to schedule a special meeting on Friday at 2 p.m. and Special Events Manager Jenny Diersen said staff, the Institute and members of council went door-to-door.
“They did ask staff to complete an outreach effort," Diersen said. "We started off Monday by providing door-to-door residential outreach throughout all of Old Town and that included Sullivan Rd., Park Ave. from about 9th St. to about 15th. It also included Empire and Lowell and Norfolk and Woodside.”
Staff also had two special meetings on Wednesday for public comment. Diersen said they’ve heard both support and concerns from the community and staff is recommending council approve the change.
“That’s due to a number of operational and logistics for city staff and throughout the community and also that the event impacts are being mitigated," Diersen said. "We’ll be discussing that tomorrow night at council. We do encourage people to come and I want to reiterate how important it is for the public process for city council to hear back from residents about, do they support it or are there concerns that need to be addressed?”
Diersen said the change benefits both the Institute and the city because in that one event they were able to lower the operational costs with everything from transportation, the police department.
But even more important, Diersen said the venue brought back the nostalgia from days gone when the community gathered for concerts in City Park.
I’m Melissa Allison, KPCW News.