The Winter Sports School allows athletes to attend classes during summer so they can spend more winter time training. In 2013, it transitioned from operating as an independent school to a charter school, and moved from a temporary place at Utah Olympic Park to its current home across from Canyons Village.
But Tess Miner-Farra, head of the school, says its current 9,000 square feet—a converted single-family home—is just too small for the number of students and faculty.
“We are bursting at the seams,” she said. “We have lots of shared classrooms. We have a large space that serves as an art studio some part of the year and a science lab the rest of the year. We'd like dedicated spaces for all of those purposes. We need meeting spaces; we need spread-out spaces.”
The WSS expansion in 2013 included approval for more square footage, parking and students. But construction hasn’t started, and the school wants to include an outdoor amphitheater in the buildout that wasn’t in the original plan, so it needs to go back to the planning commission.
Miner-Farra says right now the priority is not to increase the student population—just to expand the facilities to meet existing needs. Phase two expansion would increase the number of students from 120 to 160 and staff from 16 to 20 over the next decade.
County staff have recommended the planning commission approve the request and all the other agenda items being considered Tuesday.
The other four items on the agenda are all about redrawing zoning boundaries around the basin.
The first is in Hidden Cove, where a vacant lot would be dissolved into two neighboring lots, which each have a single-family home on them.
Another is in Glenwild, where the owner of two lots would like to expand a home on one of them. Similar to Hidden Cove, the two lots would be merged to allow the owner to expand the home lawfully.
Then the commissioners will consider an application to add part of the residential Gillmor subdivision to the neighboring Silver Creek Commerce Center zone.
The same applicant is also asking for a boundary change to the Gillmor lot, which technically must be approved by the Summit County Council. On that one, the planning commission will give a positive or negative recommendation to the council.
The planning commission will meet Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Richins building in Kimball Junction. Click here to attend the meeting via Zoom.
