The developers of the proposed base area of Park City Mountain Resort say they are aiming for the construction to be at least 15% more sustainable than current building code requires.
Park City’s sustainability goals are lofty. City operations are aiming to be run on 100% renewable energy by 2022 as well as becoming net-zero with their carbon emissions. The city is also currently working towards zero waste city wide, as well as the entire community being run on renewable energy by 2030.
At Wednesday night’s planning commission meeting, discussion of the proposed development for the base area of Park City Mountain Resort was all about sustainability. City staff on Wednesday expressed their desire the project reflect those goals.
The proposed project would develop the northern end of PCMR’s base and turn the current surface parking lots into a system of condominiums, a hotel, retail space, as well as some affordable and employee housing units. Parking would be moved underground.
Dr. Tommy Zakrzewski is the Director of Integrative Energy Engineering for HKS, a real estate development company working with the main developer of the project, PEG Companies. He says the developers want to work towards the city’s sustainability goals too.
“We’re on board with that climate action goal and we want to be part of that community solution and we’ve been working on developing plans and strategies that are really supportive and complementary,” said Zakrzewski. “We recognize that there’s critical priorities and high level strategies that lead to the success of the resolution such as energy efficiency, electrification, one-hundred percent renewable energy, and regeneration.”
Zakrzewski’s presentation to the planning commission included proposed commitments to be 15% above current building requirements for energy savings, with a stretch goal of 20%. The presentation also included a proposed pathway for all-electric buildings, on-site renewable energy, and electric vehicle charging stations in parking garages.
Zarkzerski said in order for the project to be net-zero, more than 13 acres of land would be needed to house the solar panels necessary to generate that much electricity. Instead, he offered a hybrid approach.
The developers would provide some on-site renewable energy and purchase the rest using renewable energy credits and methods that would offset the project’s emissions.
Zarkzerski said enough energy could be produced on site to power 90 homes for a year, which equates for about 6% of the energy needed for the site, with options to expand in the future.
Community member Angela Moschetta said the proposal looks nice and commended the efforts, but worried it lacked concrete promises and left too much room for the goals to fall short.
“This entire proposal seems overly-idealistic and maybe set up for failure with so many of the infrastructure decisions and implementations in cans that kind of seem to be kicked well down the road of having to figure out absolutely,” Moschetta said. ”I worry that goals will remain lofty and unattainable through the lifetime of the project, or at best, maybe they’ll be underachieved.”
Park City’s Senior Planner Alexandra Ananth said the city will be expecting solid guarantees of the project’s sustainability as the application process continues.
“We’re coming along and I expect that we will come back to you at some point with a list of firm commitments like what [PEG] had in their last slide that they presented today and we’ll really build from that,” she said.
Park City Planning Director Bruce Erickson told KPCW this week the commission was hoping to have the base development discussion complete by October or November, but it is clear that is not realistic given the scope of the project and the desire from the community to get things right.
The planning commission will hold two special meetings on November 18th and December 16th to solely discuss the base development project and answer any questions the public might have.
No date has been set for the commission to vote on approval of the project but the next planning commission meeting is tentatively scheduled for November 11th.
