There could soon be big news coming out of Kimball Junction, according to Summit County Development Director Pat Putt. Putt also said that discussions are happening soon among the stakeholders along Highway 248, in order to plan regionally.
Last week, Putt told KPCW that they think that, any time now, they will get an application from the new owners of the Tech Park at Kimball Junction, asking for a reconsideration of its approval.
The Tech Park, under the Boyer Company, was approved for a million square feet of development in late 2008. Last spring it was announced that the Dakota Pacific firm had bought the property.
Putt said at this point, he doesn’t know what changes will be requested, but he didn’t think that Tech uses would go away entirely.
“I think what we more than likely going to see are ideas that will involve both more residential—that’s a broad category, would some of that be workforce housing, would some of that be just market? We’ll have to wait and see, but the answer’s probably, it’s likely that there may be a provision for other commercial or retail to go into that area in addition to tech uses. I doubt that the tech uses would just be completely eliminated.”
On another topic, he said there will be a meeting in early August, to discuss planning issues for the Highway 248 corridor, bridging Summit and Wasatch County. He said those issues will likely also be of interest to Park City, towns in Wasatch County, and the ten-year-old town of Hideout, near 248.
“Y’know, it’s a bad excuse to say everybody’s busy. Everybody is really busy, but I think some of these recent discussions about future annexations—and for the different jurisdictions, thinking about what that’s going to look like for the next 20 years. I think if there’s a good side to that, is the recognition that we do need to talk. And it looks like we are going to begin those really soon.”
He said from sitting in on some Hideout city meetings, he knows one major concern for them is how to pay for services.
“Residential property taxes aren’t always the best source of funding those. You’re always kind of chasing the horizon financially to be able to pay for things like road maintenance and snow-plowing and police and all those sorts of things. So that’s a big dilemma for them as well. The other thing expressed coming out of those meetings is school-related—the distances and the time that the kids inside Hideout have to take to get to the schools over in Wasatch County. That’s a big concern.”
