The land at the intersection of Kearns Blvd. and Bonanza Dr. was seen as the future home of the Kimball Art Center when Park City Municipal bought the property in 2017 for a future arts and culture district.
That plan was later abandoned, leaving the nonprofit in a temporary location after selling its longtime property on Main Street in 2015.
The Park City Council is now in the final stages of planning a new design for the five acres.
During a work session about the property Wednesday, council members voiced support for providing space to the Kimball on site.
What that will look like remains to be determined, as the city and nonprofit’s leaders negotiate privately. Kimball Art Executive Aldy Milliken repeated his request for one acre Wednesday. Milliken said they want enough space to grow as an organization.
“We might not build on the entire space that we could possibly build on in the first five years of our existence because there’s a lot of people that want to build this quickly, so we want to build it quickly,” Milliken said. “We’re gonna have to fundraise. So we might think of a phased approach, but we would not want to get into a property limitation that constricts us.”
Outside of the Kimball’s new home, council members said they also support the property having affordable workforce housing and potentially underground parking. However, several members expressed that they couldn’t make any hard decisions until they saw accurate financial estimates.
Council member Ed Parigian was passionate about the need for affordable housing specifically for younger people.
“They work two jobs, they want to be skiing,” Parigian said. “They’re not necessarily looking to buy a home. They want to live their life, they want to have fun.”
Commercial space for restaurants and coffee shops have long been included in the plan. On Wednesday council members also said they’d like the walkable area to have maker spaces for local artists, separate from the new Kimball Art Center studio.
Park City’s vision for the land will be formulated in a request for proposals, or RFP, to attract developers. Developers would then pitch to the city their best designs based on the RFP requirements the council finalizes later this year. The selected developer would also be tasked with working directly with the Kimball Art Center to integrate the nonprofit’s space into the entire five acre project.
