The base development proposal for Park City Mountain Resort was back in front of the Park City Planning Commission Wednesday night. The complexity of the project and frustrations of those involved showed during the meeting.
Even though the only item on Wednesday’s planning commission agenda was building height and setback requests for the base of PCMR, the commission spent the first two hours of the meeting revisiting the topic of the last discussion -- parking.
The developer, PEG Companies, is requesting roughly 500 fewer stalls than what is required for a project of its size in Park City’s current land management code.
Their proposal is 500 stalls more than what is currently at the base area, however, and they argue the multiple uses of the base, as well as the city’s public transportation goals warrant the exception.
Frustrations showed during the parking discussion with PEG, the city, and the commissioners at odds with one another over the number of on-site stalls, off-site stalls, and the use of the surrounding streets.
Commissioner John Kenworthy expressed his irritation with contradictions between city recommendations and past findings over whether or not 14th and 15th street could or should be used for resort traffic. Previous guidance was to use the streets, but current recommendations are to reduce the through traffic.
“I’ve read the studies from 10 years ago, five years ago, 15 years ago and you’ve heard me state, or just read the general plan that we have to use these; these should not be precluded,” Kenworthy said. “Now you’re coming up and telling me all these things that are exact opposite than in reports that I’ve read, so help me out here.”
At the end of the discussion not much progress was made.
PEG’s VP of Development Robert Schmidt worried that if discussions continue in a roundabout manner, the commission and PEG run the risk of not accomplishing much of anything in future talks.
“At this level, at this master plan level, I want to make sure that we don’t get stuck in an analysis paralysis because that would just kill us and this whole project,” he said. “We can’t just keep going around and around and around, we’ve got to move forward.”
Commissioner Sarah Hall added her thoughts and willingness to find a better solution to the time constraints.
“I think that a lot of us, we all want to kind of get to, we want to see this through to fruition and we don’t want to be just, like, spinning our wheels indefinitely and I don’t know what the solution is,” said Hall. “I’ve suggested meeting earlier. I love the PEG-specific meetings only … We all have comments that we want to give, but we want to hear what was the agenda item.”
In an effort to speed up the process, commissioners decided to submit many of their comments in writing to the city planning department. Those comments will be included in future agenda packets.
The planning commission is expected to revisit transit and traffic circulation at the base area in June.
