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Everything to do inside of Park City proper.

‘This Will be a High Bar’ for Quinn’s Junction Development Applicant

Utah Film Commission

The developer of the Quinn’s Junction area that includes the Park City Film Studios has submitted an application to the city to amend their 2012 development agreement. The city council said at Thursday night’s meeting the applicant better have a good reason to request the change.  

 

The property south of Kearns Blvd. at Quinn’s Junction was already the subject of a hard-fought approval process nearly a decade ago when the original development agreement was approved in 2012.

 

In addition to the Park City Film Studios, plans have been in place to construct a hotel, along with several other film-industry related buildings. 

 

Quinn Capital Partners submitted the request. According to the application, there are over 250,000 square feet of undeveloped density and Quinn Capital Partners is seeking to amend the development agreement to allow for conditional uses of the remaining building footprints.

 

Quinn Capital Partners says if the amendment is approved, it will result in a mixed-used development that includes affordable housing, a grocery store, and office space.

 

Reaction from the council on Thursday night was not very enthusiastic. Many members were involved in the process themselves or part of the community during the original application process in 2012.

 

Councilmember Max Doilney said he was surprised to see the application, given how big an undertaking the first development agreement was. 

 

“Frankly, I’m a little surprised to even see it,” said Doilney. “I just think there are so many of these conversations already happening and everybody wants to change their zoning to mixed use and everybody wants to do this stuff. I just, I don’t know, it seemed like this was a big enough process the first time.”

 

Park City Mayor Andy Beerman was a councilmember himself in 2012 and remembered how contentious the original process was. He said any amendments to the 2012 agreement should be looked at very carefully. 

 

“I was on council while we went through this development agreement and I sat through all of the planning commission meetings as well as the council meetings and it was a hard-fought development agreement that puts very specific conditions on things,” Beerman said. “Because of that, I think it’s something that should not be taken lightly and if the developer is bringing it back to council, I hope they have a very, very good reason why they want us to make any changes because it was specific for a reason.”

 

Councilmember Steve Joyce shared Beerman’s sentiments and added the proposed changes should add community value above everything, or else he’s not interested.

 

“This is gonna be a high, high bar,” he said. “Don’t come bring something about, you know, ‘hey, movie studio is not working out so now we want to build a shopping center.’ That’s just not gonna cut it so you better be bringing community value out the ying-yang before we even think about this.” 

 

City council decided on Thursday to add the application to a future council work session as opposed to sending it to the planning commission first.

 

Council said they want to determine whether or not they are even interested in exploring the application further before significant time and resources are spent on the project by the city.  

Sean Higgins covers all things Park City and is the Saturday Weekend Edition host at KPCW. Sean spent the first five years of his journalism career covering World Cup skiing for Ski Racing Media here in Utah and served as Senior Editor until January 2020. As Senior Editor, he managed the day-to-day news section of skiracing.com, as well as produced and hosted Ski Racing’s weekly podcast. During his tenure with Ski Racing Media, he was also a field reporter for NBC Sports, covering events in Europe.
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