As we’ve reported, the proposed Francis Commons project is headed to the Francis City Council with a negative recommendation from the town’s Planning Commission at their Jan. 21st meeting.
Among the comments at a lengthy session, both citizens and Planning Commissioners talked about the character of Francis, and the project’s possible impact on the town’s future.
The proposal asked for a change to a combined three zones for a parcel of nearly 18 acres, west of Highway 32. The applicant, Kit Burton, and his company Wild Willow Limited, envisions a project with 140 residential units, from townhomes to cottages, and 8600 square feet of commercial.
Among the comments in the public hearing, resident Shauna DeMars said the project would add too many people on top of Francis’ current population of 1180. Like some other speakers, she said she worked to be able to move to a rural area like Francis.
“I am absolutely not opposed to development. And I would love to see some Commercial in Francis. But I just don’t know that this one is the right answer. I worked hard to live here. I paid my dues. I lived in the city in a tiny apartment. And I moved up here for a lot of reasons. And one of em is because I love the rural feel. I like that I can see the stars at night. It’s unobstructed. There aren’t three-and four-story things obstructing our view here in this rural community.”
Another speaker, Rodney Eckstrom, said he’s not sure about the success of the retail commercial in the plan.
“What do you expect to come into there. If you look at Kamas—Family Dollar can’t survive there. And industry, the way it’s changing, office complex, retail, just doesn’t seem to be surviving. I don’t see it surviving for a while with the way technology’s changing. What do you expect for the build-out? All the influx of cars and people and everything else. I live up here. I got away from everybody in the city, came up here to enjoy the country. And now we’re turning into a mini-Park City. I just don’t see retail ever being supported. If you go over to Kimball Junction and look at all the retail over there. And the people that are there, they can’t support retail. Retail can’t come in there. There’s a ton of vacancies. Companies come and go.”
The Planning Commission voted unanimously for a Negative Recommendation.
One of the members, Natalie Atkinson, said they already have a lot of entitled projects around town that haven’t been built yet, while Francis is lacking in infrastructure. Atkinson, who works privately in commercial real estate, said a number of her professional colleagues don’t support the project. And the residential units, she said, aren’t promising.
“I feel like it’s a misconception, as I’m learning in this meeting, that we would be offering that housing to families that could attain ownership of those townhomes in a live/work concept, when really it would be landlord-owned, half-retail ghost town, half landlord-owned housing. And frankly, I certainly have the aptitude and the education to see 25 years from now that that retail could be flourishing. But until then, it’s dead. There’s no question. I owned retail in Kamas with my ex-husband. And in selling a product that was perhaps one of the most desirable products in Eastern Summit
County, and couldn’t keep that retail afloat, because there’s not enough volume of business. People are gone from 9 to 5. They’re not here shopping. And office space isn’t a viable concept any longer, as we know, because of work-from-home environments that seem to be more productive.”
Planning Commissioner Felicia Sotelo, who works as a Summit County deputy, said impacts on education or law enforcement, will fall on other entities.
“Law enforcement, schools, that is up to the County. And that’s gonna take a long time for the County to have meetings and decide and determine and allocate funds to build new roads and add onto schools and do all these things that—if we have too many people all at once, we’re gonna find ourselves in an incredible mess, not only from public-safety-wise, transportation wise but transportation wise. Four-way stop in the summer. I’ve stood out there and directed traffic. It’s bad in the summer, now, already.”
Francis Planning Commissioner Felicia Sotelo.
