The Utah Olympic Park recently began work on an affordable housing facility for athletes of all development levels, their coaches and Utah Olympic Legacy Staff. The organization’s president Collin Hilton maps out the 72 unit facility.
"(The facility will have) 146 beds. Of those 146 beds, 88 are year-round apartments, and 58 are for short-term visits of one week or two week stays.”
Hilton says they’re aiming to complete the housing project in July 2019.
“They are pretty efficient in their size. The short-term units are essentially like a hotel room, with two beds and a bathroom and a mini-fridge. (There’s also) a first-floor common kitchen for those short-term teams that are coming in. So, they don’t have to go out and spend money out every night, they can cook a pasta meal in the common kitchen.” Hilton continued, “The 88 beds that are essentially an apartment building are one and two-bedroom units that have full kitchens and are efficiently sized. They’re not your typical Park City apartment dwellings. They are similar to student housing, affordable housing units that are geared towards having low-cost abilities to stay.”
Hilton says the target for the apartment rates is $600-700 a month, while the short-term stays are aimed at $30-40 a night
“The short term are for a nightly hotel rate, for which we are targeting $35 to $40 per night per athlete. That has always been an impediment of especially our developing athletes. When they come into town (they) can never find housing. This is our attempt to provide an affordable convenient option right at an Olympic venue.”
The housing facility will provide shuttles to Kimball Junction Transit center, there will also be parking for those who want to keep a car. Utah Olympic Legacy will be hiring a manager for the housing units.
The entire size of the facility may potentially be doubled as part of Utah’s upcoming Olympic bid.
“I have two building pad locations. We’re acting on the first one, a four-story building with these 146 beds. I’ve got a second location that I think will be perhaps paid for by a future Olympic committee. We’re building these where we know--when we host another games in the future--we’ll be able to use this as a mountain athlete village for those competing in the Wasatch back.”
Utah Olympic Legacy also received help for the project from Summit County.
“Summit County helped us. We did a land-swap for the location of this to get it in a place that’s tucked in against the hill, rather than up on a more prominent location. The county is also helping us with a tax-free municipal bond effort, so we can get the lowest possible interest rates over a 25 year-term.
The housing project will cost over $13 million.
“The total project cost is $13.6 million. We did get a little bit of state funding support about one million dollars from the state to help us with the site-work, utilities, parking, roadways. The majority of it we’re financing, and the incomes associated with these short-term and long-term rates just cover our annual debt service payment.”
