Members of the public have until Wednesday, March 27, to weigh in on the two remaining ideas the Utah Department of Transportation has for redesigning Kimball Junction.
That’s also the deadline for county officials to submit their thoughts, and Summit County may want UDOT to expand its options.
Transportation planning staff presented UDOT’s three original ideas, plus three new ones, at a joint meeting of the Park City and Summit County councils the morning of March 22.
“If there's something you hate right now, and you should probably raise it,” Summit County Councilmember Roger Armstrong told the councils.
He said, although UDOT hopes to decide on a solution late this year or in early 2025, putting a few new options on the table lengthens the process.
County staff have designed three more alternatives that combine or build off of UDOT’s existing ideas. They include additional lanes, exits, underpasses or overpasses.
UDOT said it stopped considering the so-called alternative B, which turned state Route 224 into an underpass, because its footprint and price tag ballooned.
Regardless of what the state chooses, Armstrong said UDOT needs to know there’s local government and public support before the state starts raising and allocating the millions of dollars such a project requires.
A joint letter from Summit County and Park City would show government support.
Park City Mayor Nann Worel indicated Friday the city council would like to see a copy of the letter first, and most councilmembers voiced their support for showing a united front.
The letter will likely ask UDOT to put Kimball Junction on its “statewide transportation improvement program,” or STIP, essentially UDOT’s six-year to-do list.
The county wants construction to start by 2029, and it tried to get on the STIP during this past legislative session.
Armstrong said state lawmakers—who could include Kimball Junction funding in the state budget—weren’t amenable to that, partly because UDOT hadn’t settled on a solution yet.
“The complication in all that is that they've said, ‘The Olympics is not enough. We're not going to fund tens of millions of dollars of changes, or accelerate something on the STIP, for that event,” the councilmember said March 22. “But if there was more growth in Kimball Junction, that ticked a couple of boxes like growth, they would then be more inclined to do that—as soon as next year.”
State lawmakers have asked the county and the developer Dakota Pacific Real Estate to negotiate a proposed housing development on its 50 empty acres on the junction’s west side.
The developer has suggested to the council it could phase development alongside potential traffic improvements.
To the north, the owner of Outlets Park City recently applied to redevelop the shopping center into its own mixed-use community.
UDOT will accept comments on Kimball Junction traffic solutions online, via email, voicemail, by post and text message through March 27.
