Councilmember Roger Armstrong said Thursday the council has “been getting a lot of emails from the public” about a proposed development in Kimball Junction.
That’s Dakota Pacific Real Estate’s proposal to put 727 units of housing, a third of them affordable housing, on roughly 50 empty acres zoned for over 1 million square feet of office space. The land in question is just west of the Kimball Junction Transit Center around Skullcandy.
Sun Peak Homeowners Association President Van Novack is part of Friends for Responsible Development for Greater Park City, an activist group organized against the proposed development. He’s also one of the residents saying he’s emailed the council about Dakota Pacific and not heard back.
“I’ve always found the county council to be fine, upstanding folks and good citizens of Summit County,” Novack told KPCW. “It's the not-knowing that's irritating me.”
He wants councilmembers to explain why they’re revisiting the proposal.
“Even if I disagreed with it,” Novack said, “if they would just come out and say, ‘Well, we think this is beneficial for the county because of XYZ.’”
But, in these situations, councilmembers are limited in what they can discuss with residents.
“There would be a violation of the applicant’s due process rights for members of council to have communications about the application with members of the public outside the presence of the applicant,” Summit County Attorney Margaret Olson said at the Jan. 25 special meeting.
Councilmembers say they have forwarded emails to the county clerk to be entered into the official record.
The council has scheduled a public hearing for Feb. 15, the only time residents can comment in person ahead of the Feb. 20 decision.
That’s a week before the end of the state legislature’s general session.
Residents can give input by email and observe the biweekly public meetings, which are streamed and archived online, until the final decision. County Clerk Eve Furse says the best address to email comment to is planningapplications@summitcounty.org.
A lawsuit Summit County filed last spring has been paused at state Rep. Casey Snider’s request so that the county and Dakota Pacific can come to a new development agreement.
Novack wonders why the county would negotiate when it had won a key early ruling in June.
He said the prevailing opinion at Friends for Responsible Development is that the state legislature has some unknown leverage over the county: “that if they don't make a deal during the legislative session, there's going to be hell to pay.”
Earlier this month on Local News Hour, Armstrong dismissed the notion there was any threat from the state but also said he’d expect a bill similar to the one that prompted Summit County’s lawsuit.
“It wasn’t a threat. I think there would be a bill this year; there was a bill last year; there were bills the year before,” Armstrong said.
Last general session, lawmakers passed a bill aimed at giving Dakota Pacific housing development rights without county approval. Armstrong says he’s received assurances legislators won’t be involved in negotiations this time around.
