The Park City Planning Commission got its first look at the redevelopment proposal for the Yarrow hotel in September 2022. The plan originally had two buildings, one with 100 condos allowing for nightly rentals and one containing 147 affordable and 26 market-rate units that wouldn’t allow short-term rentals.
The main concern for commissioners at the time was the height of the buildings in the plan. The buildings would have been around 59 feet tall and the area is zoned for a maximum of 35 feet.
Now the plan has been updated to provide height variation. The new plan is technically one building with five residential sections. Four of the building sections would have a combined 193 nightly rental condominiums and one building would have 48 affordable housing units. The building sections would range from 49 to 60 feet, or up to five stories.
The new building plan is also over 291,000 square feet which is 50,000 square feet smaller than the original proposal. The city requires the project to have 30% open space and the plan has almost 40%, which is 29,000 square feet.
Chicago-based Singerman Real Estate owns the hotel and Peter Tomai is its representative. He said the biggest hurdle in the project has been developing such a prominent property.
“We're dedicating nearly 40% of the site to public open space," Tomai said. "So you take 40% of your, of a very expensive piece of property and make it public, then the remaining 60% of the site has to get used somewhat intensely.”
Tomai said they are trying to create something the entire community can be proud of.
Commissioners agreed there were a lot of improvements to the plan, including a proposed pedestrian and bike tunnel under Kearns Blvd. Breaking up the height into different sections also added more daylight between buildings. But commissioners are still concerned the height of the buildings would negatively affect Park City’s entry corridor.
Commission Chair Sarah Hall questioned why developers kept the height plans the same.
“Even the way you've oriented them, does not hold above where we're trying to preserve and enhance the rural resort character of the city's entry corridor," she said. "I think that this fails to do that on every level personally.”
Commissioners also didn’t like that there were fewer affordable housing units. Developers say part of the reason for that is interest rates have gone up from 3% to 7%.
Moving forward, commissioners suggested if there are more community benefits from higher buildings, like affordable housing, they might consider allowing the Yarrow development area to have buildings taller than three stories.
