Developers for the 40-acre Huntsman property in Deer Valley hoped to get approval from City Council for their plan to subdivide the parcel into 15 lots with a common space area that includes the 22,000 square foot Huntsman home.
KPCW reports on the unusual tie breaking vote to continue the topic for discussion at the next council meeting.
In a public hearing in May, the Park City Planning Commission voted unanimously to forward a positive recommendation to the City Council on the major subdivision project being called the Huntsman Estates. The current application, Phase 1, consists of the 15-lot subdivision with two lots reserved for potential additional density. In addition to the 22,000 square foot home, there is a 1,000 square foot carriage house and a 6,000 square foot underground parking garage.
Park City Council Member Steve Joyce says the city wants to achieve net zero goals and energy conservation, and they would like to consider size limits on new home development.
“Some of these just huge, huge, huge houses that are 10, 15, 20,000 square feet that are getting built. And a lot of them are second homes, occupied two weeks a year, kind of thing. And there’s been discussion, are there things that we can do to limit total house size. In fact, you see that in Colorado where local municipalities have a lot more flexibility of their zoning and codes.
Joyce says the Deer Valley Master Plan prevents the city council from limiting home sizes.
“So, we got to a vote at the end to approve it and there was discussion about should we be talking about limiting house sizes? And two of us said no, it’snot appropriate, you can’t and two said sure why not. And Andy sided with sure why not. So, they’re going to come back to us to give us something for our July 9 meeting but quite frankly, I’m not even sure what that will be.”
Joyce says the MPD is straight forward and because there are no size limits in the current code, it would not be the appropriate time to impose those restrictions. He says the planning commission provided council with a through package and Joyce believes the development will not impact visual sight lines.
“They provided all of that to the Planning Commission and it was in our package and I think that was pretty adequate and the answer is you really can't see that Huntsman property from hardly anywhere in town. It's kind of tucked up on the hillside between Marsac and Royal Street. Most people don't know there's a 20,000 plus square foot house sitting up there.”
The plan indicates the original Hunstman home will stay for the foreseeable future but the idea of limiting home sizes in Park City is something the council wants to explore.
“It’s literally one of the lots in the neighborhood and there's no expectation that it becomes a neighborhood of 20,000 square foot houses.”
The council voted to continue the discussion until the July 9th meeting, when staff will return with options that could address limiting home sizes in the development.
