© 2024 KPCW

KPCW
Spencer F. Eccles Broadcast Center
PO Box 1372 | 460 Swede Alley
Park City | UT | 84060
Office: (435) 649-9004 | Studio: (435) 655-8255

Music & Artist Inquiries: music@kpcw.org
News Tips & Press Releases: news@kpcw.org
Volunteer Opportunities
General Inquiries: info@kpcw.org
Listen Like a Local Park City & Heber City Summit & Wasatch counties, Utah
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Park City Council Holds Off On Approving Amendments To Historic Design Guidelines

historicparkcityutah.com

The Park City Council Tuesday postponed approving amendments to the design guidelines in the historic residential code, saying the public should understand what’s in them before the council signs off on them. KPCW’s Emily Means has more.

After more than 40 minutes of discussion, the Council decided to revisit the approval of new design guidelines for historic residential sites at an undetermined future date. The guidelines were last updated in 2009, and the Historic Preservation Board at the Planning Department began working in 2014 to update what they consider a living document. Historic Preservation Planner Anya Grahn says the board hoped to achieve a few goals with the updates, including coordinating standards for historic preservation guidelines with current land management code.

"We wanted to make sure that our design guidelines are helping us maintain the historic integrity and the character of our historic districts, because that helps us maintain our national register listings," Grahn said. "We also wanted to make sure that there was consistency between the [land management code] and the design guidelines, and that’s one of the reasons why you saw us making some LMC amendments. Most importantly, we wanted to try to make it user-friendly. As we sit through our design meetings every week with the public, we were noting that even though we understand our guidelines and what their intent was, it doesn’t mean that the public and other users know what those guidelines mean."

Councilmember Steve Joyce had concerns about the amendments being so specific that they may restrict homeowners’ ability to add on to their historic houses or make sustainable upgrades to their property.

"Maintain the historic height and setback of retaining walls along the street; the character of the historic site should not be significantly altered by substantially changing the proportion of built and/or paved open space—there’s a whole bunch of these—maintain onsite native plantings," Joyce said. "It’s really easy to look at those and go wait, how do I double or triple the size of my house, leave the plantings where they are, leave the walls where they are, leave the setbacks where they, are leave the proportion of open space where it is, leave the proportion of paved space where it is and do anything that’s fundamentally different, which is why I started this with 'are you trying to eliminate people’s ability to do that or not.'”

The council requested that the city sustainability department review the guidelines with the historic preservation board and that a bulk of homeowners and those affected in the historic district are actively made aware of the changes. The updated design guidelines are available at the Planning Department’s page at parkcity.org.

Emily Means hadn’t intended to be a journalist, but after two years of studying chemistry at the University of Utah, she found her fit in the school’s communication program. Diving headfirst into student media opportunities, Means worked as a host, producer and programming director for K-UTE Radio as well as a news writer and copy editor at The Daily Utah Chronicle.