The Park City City Council had a lengthy discussion about affordable housing at the future arts and culture district at their meeting on Thursday night. KPCW’s Sean Higgins has more on what the council ended up agreeing and disagreeing on:
The sticker shock of the price of affordable housing at the future arts and culture district continues to be a hard pill to swallow for a number of members of the Park City City Council.
Estimates currently put the price per unit at roughly $600,000 thanks to construction and material costs that have steadily increased over the last year. With a total price tag for the project now hovering around the $100 million mark, council was keen to explore cost-saving options.
Thursday’s discussion on the district was dedicated to the housing dilemma and showed some divisions amongst the councilors on the best path forward.
No binding decisions were made on Thursday, but a quick poll of the council showed a divide on whether or not specifically building housing at the site of the district was essential part of the project. The city owns other parcels of land and construction costs will likely be less -- possibly $150,000 or more per unit less -- if housing was instead constructed there.
For Councilmember Steve Joyce, he said it was all about asking the right questions.
“To me, this is opportunity cost,” said Joyce. ”It’s not ‘do we need affordable housing,’ it’s do we do it here? Do we do it somewhere else? Can we do it cheaper somewhere else? I actually think that’s an important part of the conversation.”
Mayor Andy Beerman added the projected costs and reluctance from council reflect the truth of constructing anything, anywhere in Park City at the moment.
“I want to be careful what assumptions we’re making that this is expensive because it’s in the arts and culture district,” Beerman said. “I think this is expensive because it’s the first time in a long time we’ve gotten really good projections ahead of time to look at, that these are numbers that maybe are close to accurate and we’re not seeing what we want to see, we’re seeing the reality of building in Park City right now.”
Another aspect of the project council was divided on was whether or not to move forward with any construction without firm commitments, either in writing or in the form of checks, from partners Sundance Institute and Kimball Arts Center. Both organizations plan to build new headquarters on the site, but the pandemic put their capital campaigns on hold.
Councilmember Nann Worel brought up that all of the back and forth from council could make their partners nervous about committing to the project before the city does, characterizing the dilemma as a ‘chicken and the egg’ situation. Fellow Councilmember Becca Gerber agreed with that assessment.
“This is a tough one, but I think from my perspective we have heard nothing but that our partners are committed to moving forward and the hard part is when we bought the property, we committed to doing an arts and culture district,” said Gerber. “I think that we also have an obligation to move forward with our planning and make sure we’re being good partners to them as well, so it is a bit of a chicken and the egg, you know? As [Councilmember Max Doilney] said, we all have to be willing to take this jump together. As we kind of hesitate about what we want to put on the area, I think that it’s natural that might cause some concern amongst partners.”
One thing council did come to an agreement on was to move forward with prepping the five-acre parcel for eventual construction. The buildings at the corner of Kearns Boulevard and Bonanza Drive sit vacant and the city does not intend to have anyone move back in. No firm date was set for demolition, but Gerber said the rough timetable was to have the site prepped by the spring.
Discussion of the arts and culture district will continue at the next city council meeting, currently scheduled for February 25th.
