The draft of a plan from the Kimball Junction Blue Ribbon Task Force will be presented to the Snyderville Planning Commission at their next meeting.
The Kimball area was among several topics, as the County Council and Planning Commission recently held a joint meeting.
The plan will go to the Snyderville Planning Commission in a work session on January 22nd.
County council member Roger Armstrong has been a member of the Blue Ribbon group and it’s no secret his concerns have focused on traffic.
“How do we get in and out of Kimball Junction?” Armstrong asked, “That’s overriding and then making the east side of Kimball Junction something other than Death Race 2000, where people can actually wander around without skipping around cars and small children. But it’ll be an interesting process.”
He said gathering places for people on foot are important in Park City. He reflected on the difference between New York and the California experience.
“The first time I ever went to New York I came home, and I was a Californian for life and went to New York and my observation after I had a chance to digest was that in New York life goes on all around you because you’re usually on foot and you’re bumping into people and there are people everywhere.” Armstrong continued, “So you have to sort of accommodate those kinds of afflictions that come from being around a bunch of people and the pleasures that come with that as well. In California life goes on in spite of you because you’re locked in a car. You don’t have those human interactions. To the extent that we can re-plan this area in a way that builds those human interactions in a way that creates a greater sense of community. I think that’s a real opportunity with the way that we look at that.”
County Development Director Pat Putt said the director of UDOT has a sincere interest in looking at the corridor, and the Blue Ribbon plan will be a springboard for that.
“Everyone immediately wants to look for the transportation and car solution in the document.” Putt explained, “It’s in there. Part of the design of the document, what I call the psychology of the document, right out of the gate we were attempting to explain that in the Kimball Junction neighborhood we want to re-create a neighborhood for people. Recognizing that we have to deal with the car. That is different than realizing that we need to move cars around and how it impacts people is secondary. That’s part of the real important psychology that goes into this document.”
