Park City community development staff presented the updated designs for the Woodside Park Phase 2 affordable housing development at the City Council meeting Tuesday. KPCW’s Emily Means has more.
The project consists of 60 units, ranging in style from three-bedroom townhomes to studio flats, with onsite parking available to residents. The Phase 2 site is situated between Woodside and Empire Avenues. City Councilmember Nann Worel believes the project is still too dense, though she supports Park City’s efforts to create more affordable housing options. She says one of the most common concerns she hears from residents is about growth.
“We want and need our central workers in town, not only to have them be part of the community, but also to give us diversity and give us a different feel, so it’s not just one-dimensional here in town," Worel said. "On the flip side of that, hardly a week goes by that I don’t have a conversation with a resident about growth and here we are, talking about putting a really dense project right here in town.”
Worel doesn’t have a solution to the density, but she does think the new design is an improvement from the original concept. Preliminary concepts were brought to the council in March 2018, when the council requested some adjustments to the design.
“I felt like it didn’t really fit with the character of the neighborhood, and so I asked to see a streetscape," Worel said. "To the credit of method design and staff, they went back and really looked at it, because at the time I said I felt like it looks like college dorms right here. They went back and reworked it, and I think it fits much better into the streetscape, but it still is a really dense project.”
The project will be funded by a portion of the 2019 Sales Tax Revenue bonds approved by the council earlier in January. The community development staff will move forward with the master planned development application to present to the Planning Commission, in the hopes of beginning construction in summer 2019.
