The Arts and Culture District development is gearing up and Recycle Utah will have to relocate its operation by the spring of 2020.
Recycle Utah has been in Park City for 28 years. The center sits on a Park City owned .4-acre property on Woodbine Way and the city has put them on notice that they’ll need to vacate the property by April.
Director Carolyn Wawra says Recycle Utah is included in the County’s Solid waste masterplan, but a new plan is not in place and won’t be finished for a couple of years.
“Well, we are working on it. We were partnering with the County since I started at recycle Utah the past two-and-a-half years ago. We were part of the County solid waste masterplan. Recycle Utah is very clearly included in that so that's kind of the direction we've been going since I started my position. We’ve kind of started to get a little more creative and exploring options. We have been looking at some options on our own, separate of those two entities, kind of getting creative.”
Board Member Ari Ionides says Recycle Utah has a proven track record of successfully diverting large amounts of waste from the county landfill. He also thinks the board could have done a better job of showing the monetary benefits to the county council.
“We were working under the impression that the County was going to help us locate and identified some land, where we would be, and this has been going on since before Carolyn’s time. Working with County and the city. The county kind of took the lead and I think the issue there for them was that we had a very large impact on diverting waste from the landfill. And I know that staff was working real hard on it.”
Ionides says they don’t expect the county to provide the land for Recycle Utah’s new home, but he says they were told there was some work being done. Now, he says it seems it’s not a high enough priority for the county until another study is complete. Ionides says the city will help them find a temporary or permanent location and regardless, he is confident they will have a place to continue operations.
Let’s say we identified land right now and we had to move April 1. But I mean there's just no way you can build a building over the thickest part of the winter right, so there would have to be something temporary to bridge us over. The city may not be ready to have us out by April 1 and we may identify something even look at temporary structures.”
Wawra says they may have to temporarily close some recycling services when they make the move in April.
They’ve looked at costs for the move and for leasing land and they haven’t had a lot of overhead due to the free rent from the city. Ionides says the board has been saving money for a long time and he says they are well positioned to buy a place, improve their operating efficiencies and keep costs low.
