The Park City City Council decided to move forward with a public hearing on the future arts and culture district at their meeting Thursday night.
After months of discussion on just what the project will look like and how the city plans to pay for it, the Park City City Council says they’re ready to present the arts and culture district to the community and decided to plan for a public hearing on the topic.
No date has been set yet, but city hall says it will likely take place sometime in the coming weeks.
Speaking to KPCW on Friday morning, Councilor Max Doilney said the hearing will be an important step in explaining the costs and funding mechanisms of the project to the public -- now in the ballpark of $100 million -- and just what the community will be getting for their money.
“Everybody’s excited with a drawing, but then as soon as you tell them what the price tag is, you know, the standard reaction is a little sticker shock,” he said. “That’s what we’re looking to get into is, ok, now you said you want this, here’s the plan, here’s what it’s gonna cost, how do you feel now?”
Thursday’s discussion about the district centered around the funding model and whether or not the city could afford the project through a combination of land sales, extending bonds, and possibly widening the scope of the Additional Resort Sales Tax.
Councilors were satisfied that the city could, in fact, pay for the project, but Councilor Steve Joyce asked whether or not the city could be doing other things with the money.
“Affordability says ‘can we scrounge up enough money to do it? If we do it are we gonna ruin our bond rating?’ and that kind of thing, and the answer is no, these guys have done a fabulous job, we can afford this,” said Joyce. “The question for me is the opportunity cost … To me, when you get back to what are you doing, it’s not ‘yes, it’s affordable,’ I think these guys have demonstrated that, it’s ‘what are all the other things that for our community we could have done with $100 or $130 million?’”
Many of Joyce’s concerns were shared by his colleagues, but were also countered by Nann Worel’s thoughts on the council’s responsibility to do what they said they would do with the land when they first purchased it in 2017.
Park City purchased the five-acre parcel four years ago in an effort to protect the land from extensive commercial development and instead use it towards community-focused projects.
“As we’re looking at ‘oh my gosh, look at this dollar amount or look at that dollar amount,’ I think we have an obligation to the community to do what we said we were gonna do,” Worel said. “And when we bough that land and when we increased the [Transient Room Tax] and passed that, we said that that was gonna be used towards arts and culture, we were gonna work to diversify our economy so that when our snow, unfortunately, is not as strong some years as it is other years, we have something to fall back on. We already have a strong cultural component in our community and this district was gonna build on that, is intended to build on that, and I just am really afraid that we’re gonna lose sight of that.”
The project was always billed as an ambitious one, tackling several key community priorities identified in Park City’s Vision 2020 process like affordable housing and transportation, in addition to providing a space for local creatives to work. There are also plans in place to build new headquarters for the Kimball Arts Center and Sundance Institute at the site.
The date and participation details for the future public hearing on the arts and culture district are expected to be released by the city in the near future.
