After a decision made by Park City’s Board of Adjustment, the timeframe for constructing the city’s upcoming Woodside Park Phase II affordable housing project has been delayed.
The Park City Board of Adjustment decided in June to remand the Woodside Park Phase II master planned development application back to the Park City Planning Commission based on one aspect of the project—a reduction in setbacks the board felt wasn’t justified.
The planning commission approved the MPD in May, but resident Doug Lee appealed the decision on four different points: that open space requirements; setback requirements; historic design review requirements; and parking requirements as outlined in the land management code were not met. The board voted to send the MPD back to the planning commission to have another look, specifically at setback reductions.
The base zoning of the site allowed for setbacks of 10 feet; however, the MPD process increases that requirement to 25 feet. The land management code allows the planning commission to reduce setbacks for MPDs if it is “necessary to provide desired architectural interest and variation.” Park City Community Development Director Anne Laurent says the city as applicant had requested the setback reductions, ranging from 5 feet to 20 feet, for the 58-unit project for a few reasons.
“What it does is it allowed us to breakdown the massing of the facades a little bit," Laurent said. "Instead of having it be a flat wall, we could put porches on. We could also kind of separate the buildings into a few separate buildings.”
As staff has been modeling what the project could look like with 25-foot setbacks, Laurent says the project, which features 52 affordable units and eight market-rate, could potentially lose a few units and that it may have to move away from featuring a few townhomes and toward all stacked flats.
“We're actually having to not have so many separate buildings, but we’re having to combine it, and it's definitely putting the open space that is a requirement of the MPD toward the perimeter at the setbacks," Laurent said. "It's reducing the open space that we had through the center portion, which was that public right-of-way that allowed the access all the way up to the base resort, that continues down through the Woodside Phase I project we're just finishing, all the way down to Park Avenue.”
Laurent says if the project had approval from the get-go, the city likely would have broken ground on Woodside Park Phase II this fall. That timeline has been delayed, as the appeal process plays out.
"With this appeal and wanting to make sure that we don't get down a road with taxpayer dollars and then have an outcome that was a waste of public monies, it was certainly prudent to say, 'we're going to put it on hold until the spring,'" Laurent said. "So we basically just took away the winter season and some of the work we would try to get a jump on. But what we will do is, come this spring, hit it full force, and we’ll do everything we can to hit the ground running and keep going."
Laurent says the city is hoping to bring the Woodside Park Phase II MPD back to the planning commission to discuss setbacks on Aug. 28.
