Park City leaders and local developer Rory Murphy cut the ribbon on the Engine House development in December. The Homestake Road building has 123 units, 99 of which are deed-restricted affordable rentals.
The affordable units are rented at 60% of area median income, or AMI. That’s a roughly $71,000 annual salary for one person, according to data from Mountainlands Community Housing.
But some in the community have expressed concerns that Engine House isn’t filling up fast enough. Summit County Councilmember Roger Armstrong, who represents Park City, referenced those concerns at a meeting Wednesday.
"There's been a lot of chatter online that EngineHouse shouldn't have been built in Park City because there's no demand for affordable housing,” he said.
But Murphy told KPCW almost 70% of the affordable units have signed leases and over 45% are occupied. Almost half of the 24 market-rate units also have leases.
Murphy said new apartment projects typically lease five to 10 units per month, with 10 considered to be an aggressive leasing caseload. Engine House has averaged 23 leases per month.
“To have 67 leases signed on a 99-unit building three months into it is phenomenal,” Murphy said. “It's an extraordinarily rapid leasing pace.”
Murphy said apartments also want to spread leases throughout the year. If all the leases were due in January and February, it would be much more challenging to fill them.
It also takes time to verify tenants qualify for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, program. Murphy said the process involves employer interviews and validating tax and bank documents.
“We are a LIHTC-funded building, and the verification process can take 30 to 45 days. So that's the lag between the leases signed and the people that have actually moved in,” Murphy said.
Park City Housing and Development Coordinator Sara Wineman said it typically takes new developments 12 to 15 months to become fully occupied.
She said there’s also still a huge demand for affordable housing, even with Engine House almost 70% full.
“What we're hearing from our local workforce in the chamber is that our workforce wants to live and work in their town,” she said. “They want to have a sense of community, and there's just not enough options for them to either rent or own.”
Park City has heard this from the workforce for over a decade. That’s why in 2016, the city council set a goal to provide 15% of local workers with affordable housing by 2025, or about 800 units.
In 2025, the council decided to double down, aiming to provide 15% of the workforce with affordable housing by 2032. Wineman said projected employment in 2032 is about 12,200 workers, so the city is aiming to provide over 1,800 units by then.
“We're about 44% of the way towards that goal, and we have additional units under construction, and that would get us to about 63% of our goal,” Wineman said.
One affordable housing project in the works is Clark Ranch, near Park City Heights. Wineman said the city is working with the Clark Ranch developer to understand workforce housing needs and has released a survey to local employers.
So far, Wineman said many respondents are in support of affordable housing.
But local workers still face obstacles, like short-term rentals. Wineman said many long-term rentals have been moving to short-term rentals, which are more profitable. As of 2023, Summit County was leading the state with about 23% of all housing listed as short-term rentals, according to a Kem C. Gardner report.
“The short-term market is really starting to push out our local workforce from housing options that they traditionally might have had in the past,” Wineman said.
Further, the Summit County Economic Development and Housing Department estimated 38.3% of all homes in the county were vacant as of April 2025.
