The Snyderville Planning Commission has been holding a series of meetings with the Dakota Pacific applicants at Kimball Junction—and they will continue into the new year as well.
The developers recently reviewed their projected traffic impacts. We talked to Snyderville Chairwoman Malena Stevens about what she heard and her impressions.
Dakota Pacific is proposing to create a mixed-use project on 51 acres that was approved for the Boyer Tech Park 11 years ago.
But we asked Malena Stevens how a project with 1100 residences, commercial, hotels, and offices could generate less traffic than the Boyer Park.
She explained the rationale that was presented to the Snyderville Commission at a recent meeting.
“ When we’re looking at the Boyer project, we’re looking at a project that’s going to have in-load and out-load at the same time as our peak ski, peak in-load for all of our other businesses. So in looking at this, the trip generation would be throughout the day—that’s throughout the day as opposed to between 7 o’clock and 9 o’clock, and then again from 4 to 6m which is when we’re seeing most of the traffic currently.”
We asked, though, if the project’s residents and employees might not commute back and forth on the same schedule as other traffic on 224.
“Some of them, maybe with this—there’s a very robust bus system that is included, as well as, this project is in a very unique location. It’s next to the services that these people would need, that they could very easily walk to, bike to. We’re trying as we’re looking at this project, and with the development itself—trying to ensure that it’s place that really is walkable and livable. And so these people can get to all the places that they would need to go without a car.”
She said the applicants have focused on creating a good experience for pedestrians or bicyclists moving in the project.
“They would have a separated bike path. So it would be separated by either grade or grass or some sort of barrier from the street. So we wouldn’t have bikes and cars kind of intermingling in a way that the bikes may feel unsafe, and thus people not want to bike as frequently. The same thing with pathways through the project, getting directly to the transit center.”
She added the applicants have looked to some of the principles in the recent Kimball Junction Master Plan.
Some Snyderville Commissioners have also been concerned that the project wouldn’t house workers locally, but would attract residents who commute to Salt Lake.
Stevens said to deal with that, some projects have used what is called a “waterfall provision.”
“There’s a certain time period that, they have to advertise to people that live within a certain radius and work within a certain radius currently. And then if they’re not able to sell the housing based off of that, then they can kind of expand but it’s incrementally.”
While the review is still a work in progress, Stevens said that overall, the idea of Dakota’s plan replacing the Tech Park concept is interesting.
“I think it’s a really interesting concept of taking a project that--from what developers have stated and what we’ve seen over the last ten years, does not appear to be viable at this point—and taking it and turning it into something that could provide some benefits to the community. Affordable housing for both Park City and Summit County is a critical priority and a huge focus as we do not have enough units to supply for that. So that is something that I think is interesting. A place for a more functional bus system is really critical as well.”
Snyderville Planning Chairwoman Malena Stevens
