The $12 million Jordanelle Parkway is officially open and provides the residents who live there with better emergency access, safer school bus routes, and more efficient commuter links between the neighborhoods. KPCW’s Carolyn Murray has more.
Wasatch County Manager Mike Davis said the Jordanelle Parkway officially opened last month about 18 months behind schedule. Wasatch County did not directly pay for the road construction.
"And that was done through a loan through UDOT, and MIDA facilitated the cost of that. So, the county didn't pay for it MIDA paid for it. But they will be using tax increment to pay that off over the next 20 years."
MIDA--The Military Installation Defense Authority and Extell Development Company, were planning to break ground on the Military hotel at the Mayflower Resort last year, but have put things on hold until later this spring.
"We were ready for the hotel, what we call the MIDA hotel. The permit was all prepared. All the reviews are done, and so forth. And they asked to not issue the permit until sometime this year. They're talking late spring, possibly to issue that permit. But they are proceeding with some affordable housing and apartment housing that's just in the works right now. We anticipate those permits sometime this spring as well. So, we've got a couple of things that are happening there now on the Extell side. The lakeside of Hwy 40, we got a lot going on with residential housing or issuing quite a few permits now."
Davis said the MIDA hotel developers may have pushed back the groundbreaking due to the impacts COVID has had on the local economy.
"With the COVID situation and restrictions on travel and so forth, there was a little bit of hesitation there to pull the trigger on something that several hundred $1,000,000 and so they haven't started stopped and they certainly are proceeding with the infrastructure portion of that with water sewer and all those types of things that the actual permit for the structure that goes out of the ground but let's just wait a few months and then we'll do it a little bit later."
A $67 million bond was issued through MIDA to pay for the Jordanelle Parkway and Mayflower Resort infrastructure. An additional $97 million bond is being issued to continue funding the MIDA/Extell infrastructure.
"They did a public infrastructure bond through MIDA that handles a lot of the infrastructure for the water systems necessary for snowmaking and to build the ski resort that we anticipate will join with Deer Valley. That was a big portion of that public infrastructure bond and then the bond for the highway and portals. That's handling a little different scenario. But once again, that's a MIDA bond, so it's not under the county. But $97 million---I don't know the full accountability of that.
It's a lot of money, but they're planning a lot of infrastructure."
The UDOT project installing two portals crossing underneath US 40 from the Mayflower resort to the Jordanelle reservoir will continue next summer. A climbing lane between Heber City and Park City was completed on US-40 last summer.
