Across the street from City Park, on the other side of Park Avenue, freshly painted single-family homes and townhomes sit empty. They’re the units for the first phase of Park City’s Woodside Park housing development, and Park City Housing Manager Jason Glidden says they aren’t quite ready to be occupied yet.
“We're still going through some punchlist items for some of the units there, and there's some paperwork that has to be completed," Glidden said. "We did get approval on the plat, but, actually, after you get that approval from city council, it needs to go through the process of review, to make sure that, legally, all the wording is correct and everything like that. So, that takes a little bit of time, so we're in the revisions of finalizing that plat. That needs to happen prior to any sale of those units.”
There are seven units for sale, plus one unit Glidden says the city is saving for a future executive employee, should Park City Municipal need a new city manager or police chief down the road.
“City council has decided to retain the one unit right now," Glidden said. "It’ll allow them some time to discuss that a little bit more. We're looking at it as a possible recruitment tool for us as a city, but there is also the opportunity to, in the future, if we decide that we want to go ahead and sell, that we could.”
The city council decided to use a weighted selection process for the Woodside units, where qualified applicants can receive additional odds if they meet certain criteria: if they’re a first responder, such as a firefighter; a community builder, such as a teacher; are employed within city limits; or have worked within the Park City School District boundaries for five years or more. Glidden says the city is hoping to move forward with the selection process in September.
“Those are the type of things that we really want to, in a sense, give some extra chances for those folks who have actually been part of the community for a little bit longer."
As for Woodside Park Phase II, a decision by the Park City Board of Adjustment has set the project timeline back. The master planned development application for the 58-unit project, which includes a stacked condo complex and townhomes, was sent back to the planning commission based on what the board of adjustment interpreted as unwarranted setback reductions, from 25 feet to 10 feet, in some areas. Glidden says the city as applicant now has to further prove to the planning commission—which had originally approved the MPD—that the reduced setbacks are needed to provide architectural interest. The project’s architects have essentially modeled what the project looks like with setback reductions versus what it could look like at 25 feet.
"We do meet that in certain parts of the development, but there are certain areas there where we've asked for a reduction down to the current zoning, which would be 10 feet, and so that's what they're going to take a look at," Glidden said. "What our architects have done is kind of step back to show the streetscape in that area, to show how the design that we currently have right now fits better with that streetscape then if we were required to go to the 25-foot setbacks what that would do to the design of the building."
Glidden says increasing the setbacks to 25 feet would limit continuity between Woodside Phase I and Phase II by removing the townhomes and having a large stacked flat complex on the perimeter of the project. It would also impact the space set aside for the pedestrian walkway connecting Woodside Phase I all the way up to the Park City Mountain Resort base parking lot on Empire Avenue. The Woodside Park Phase II MPD will be heard again at the Aug. 28 planning commission meeting.
