Park City Senior Planner Alex Ananth and Planning Director Gretchen Milliken joined KPCW last week to provide some clarity to the complicated situation around the proposed base development project at Park City Mountain Resort.
It’s no secret the proposal to develop the surface parking lots at Park City Mountain Resort into underground parking, a hotel, condominiums, and retail space has a lot of moving parts.
It’s further complicated by a 23-year-old development agreement that grants over 800,000 square feet of density. On top of that, the original master plan study that permitted the building height exceptions that allowed the density to be built is now expired.
Park City Senior Planner Alex Ananth told KPCW the developer is now seeking a new master plan study granting many of those same exceptions to the city’s land management code.
“It’s best to sort of think of it as a blended review,” said Ananth. “We have these overall requirements that were allowed for in 1998, such as the density, where the planning commission transferred development rights off of the open space mountain area and decided that it made more sense to have a more compact development at the base rather than spread the density up the mountain. So the density is definitely something that is still valid and then we’re looking at the new exceptions under the guidance of the land management code now.”
Current proposals have building heights topping out at near the 100-foot mark, three times the limit of 35 feet allowed in Park City’s code.
Community members have been vocal about PEG’s plans for the base area, including Members of the Responsible Resort Area Development Coalition, also known as RRAD. Concerns over the building heights, transit circulation around the base area, as well as the endemic parking problems at the resort during the winter months have been vocalized on social media, as well as during the public comment periods of commission meetings.
Planner Ananth said although the situation is complicated due to what was granted in 1998, there was a preference for higher buildings back then as opposed to a more spread out complex. It is now up to the members of the planning commission to determine if that is still the case.
“It’s no one’s fault, it was, you know, again, the decision of the planning commission in 1998 to allow for this density transfer and they back then granted exceptions to height and setbacks so they could allow for this more compact development,” she said. “I think that part of the idea is tall and slender is potentially preferable to squat and massive. You’re sort of protecting more views if you wedding-cake the building up a little bit.”
Traffic and parking solutions at the base have been particularly hard to work through. The city has said they want to reduce the amount of traffic coming to the base by 20% and Planning Director Gretchen Milliken said limiting the amount of on-site parking while simultaneously coordinating with current and future off-site parking and public transit is one way to do that.
“What I think we’re trying to do is offer people options,” Milliken said. “We’re not just saying ‘you can’t park and too bad.’ We’re saying ‘ you can’t park, but you can park here. You can park at the mountain if you want to pay the fee of parking. You can park out here if you don’t want to pay the fee.’ We’re trying to make the bus or the shuttle between where the parking lot is and the mountain as easy and as efficient as possible.”
Traffic and circulation are scheduled to be the topic of the next base development discussion for the planning commission on June 16th.
