This time of year, Park City is usually accepting permit applications and scheduling the summer calendar of events. In this unprecedented time of the public health order to stay at home, Park City’s summer events remain uncertain.
Park City Economic Development Program Manager Jenny Diersen gave a summer events update to more than 50 people who were signed into the Tuesday morning Coffee with Council Zoom meeting. The big summer events like Park Silly Market, the 4th of July Parade, softball and soccer tournaments will be addressed next month when Diersen says they’ve gathered more information.
“May 1 or the first week of May, I think is a big week where we will hopefully be able to look down the tunnel at the next steps and what it might mean for events and business in town. So as events are applying, we are asking them to let us know what their postponement policies are or their cancellation timeline so we can work with them and understanding those things and how to manage the calendar."
Diersen says they are balancing both the economic impacts and the ongoing event fatigue concerns expressed by residents.
“You know, we’re going to continue to see the things we’re doing for events as major priorities. So, economics and community and cultural events and how those are so important to our community, especially now, as well as mitigation and in both sustainability and transportation and residential impacts. So how can we come back even stronger than we were, I think is something we're going to be looking at down the pipeline.”
The Silly Market would be starting June 7th and Diersen has been in communication with the organization trying to determine if they’ll need to postpone the earlier Sunday events to happen in the fall. She says their decisions have far reaching economic impacts.
“So, you take something like a Silly Market or an Arts Festival who have close to 200 vendors. That's 200 small, generally local businesses that you're affecting, not to mention the businesses on Main Street or in the venue areas, and how that's affected. And you know, I think it's going to be a really important, delicate balance of how we move forward in those decisions.”
Park City Council member Tim Henney says the decision to bring in summer events will be determined by the public health department.
“The health department has the authority that they have to save lives. That's what this is about. It's about saving lives. And is there going to be an impact to the business community when we're trying to save lives? Yes, there is and we're in the midst of that right now, and we're seeing the magnitude of that impact and it's difficult."
Coffee with Council Zoom meetings will be held weekly on Tuesday mornings at 9. Park City will post the meeting access codes on their events tab at parkcity.org.
