The Park City Recreation Advisory Board subcommittee has been working for several years to create an urban parks master plan. Its proposal was presented to the Park City Council on Tuesday during a special meeting, and a portion of the Park City Municipal Golf Course was intentionally left out of the proposal.
The Urban Parks Zone Master Planning subcommittee’s proposal is to preserve five Park City urban parks from future development infringements. They identified Prospector Park, City Park, Rotary Park, and Park Meadows’ Creekside Park. The fifth parks preservation proposal includes the north end of the municipal golf course. Assistant Recreation Director Tate Shaw says the original proposal included the entire golf course. However, that has changed.
“At this time, under some guidance from the planning department, we’ve been asked to only have the north portion of the golf course, the north parcel be included in the current UPZ adoption at this time as we know there are some communications happening with PEG project,” Shaw said. It is our intent and we would love to be direct that we want to include the entire golf course when we get to a completion of the local parks preservation map.”
Park City Councilor Steve Joyce commended the sub-committee on their work to preserve Park City’s urban parks but asked for clarification on the decision to leave the south end of the golf course out of the proposal.
“The whole idea that you guys brought to this, which I thought was wonderful, is we have these treasured areas that are part of our heritage,” he said. “You gave all the reasons out of the general plan and then we left out the south part of the golf course because there's actually negotiations going on right now to take a chunk of the land from one of these treasured places and use it for a road. It seems just so in direct conflict with everything you guys have spent the last three or four or five years working on that it sounds more like you--I would have expected you guys to go God, we need to protect it really quick because they're about to actually screw it up.”
Preliminary plans for the PEG Companies to develop the base area of Park City Mountain Resort include a proposal to use a small portion of the south end of the golf course for two roundabouts.
Park City Planning Director Bruce Erickson said in an email that PEG did not request the exception and that City Transportation Planning wants to make sure there is sufficient room for a transit system and bus routes to work in the future, whether or not PEG develops the area.
Shaw said during work sessions with the Planning department, they included the entire golf course but were told that the overall proposal could be held up by the current negotiations.
“If we were to sit back and hold on waiting for what's going to happen with the PEG project this UPZ process as a whole may have been delayed six months or more.”
Park City Planner Alexandra Ananth attended the presentation and explains the main reason for holding that part of the golf course out of the UPZ proposal.
“One of the particular reasons we're holding it back is we want to know if the proposed roundabouts are going to help prioritize transit at the base center and if that area is needed to enable bus turning movements. So, we're still doing that analysis.”
The Urban Parks Zone proposal will return to council for the Sept. 17 meeting.
