Summit County Council gives Dakota Pacific counterproposal

The council wants Dakota Pacific Real Estate to reduce proposed housing from 727 units to 500.

The developer owns about 50 undeveloped acres west of the Skullcandy headquarters in Kimball Junction. It has the right to build tech offices—the equivalent of 24 Skullcandies—but is asking to build a mix of condos and townhomes instead.

At the latest special meeting Feb. 8, the council said the footprint must be smaller.

Here's Dakota Pacific's latest proposal:

• 727 housing units at 979,000 square feet
  
  • 217 affordable units
    
    • 152 reserved for 60% AMI or below
    • 65 reserved for 44% AMI or below
  • 510 market rate units
    
    • 93 reserved for seniors
    • 20 reserved for 120% AMI or below
• 235,000 square feet of commercial
  
  • Office space
  • Medical facilities
  • Continuing care
• 31,000 square feet of retail
  
  • Experiential retail, e.g. climbing gym
• Community park

Here's what the council asked for instead:

• 500 housing units
  
  • 250 affordable units
    
    • 1/3 reserved for 40% AMI or below
    • 1/3 reserved for 60% AMI or below
    • 1/3 reserved for 80% AMI or below
  • 250 market rate units
    
    • 1/3 reserved for seniors
    • 20 reserved for 120% AMI or below
• Same commercial density
• Additional requests include
  
  • A park-and-ride capture lot
  • Medical facilities
  • A continuing care residential community
• No fractional ownership or nightly rentals

“I don't even know how to respond because it's so far away from where we are,” Dakota Pacific CEO Marc Stanworth responded at the Feb. 8 meeting.

For context, Summit County’s area median income is about $150,000 for a family of four, and the Outlets Park City covers 324,000 square feet on about 37 acres.

Senior housing, continuing care and an expanded park-and-ride have been a part of the conversation already, but Stanworth was hoping to discuss smaller tweaks.

Council Chair Malena Stevens also told him they’d like to see the project phased alongside a Utah Department of Transportation-led Kimball Junction overhaul.

There’s public concern that Dakota Pacific’s development will aggravate traffic. Others argue it could house workers that commute into Park City anyway, actually unclogging the junction.

Councilmember Chris Robinson suggested Dakota has “legislative abilities” the county doesn’t, asking the developer to help get state leaders to prioritize a Kimball Junction traffic solution.

“We have a very exercised body politic—public—that lives with the traffic the same way we do,” Robinson said. “So we have to have certainty that something is really going to happen.”

UDOT has three ideas for how to fix Kimball’s traffic, and it will select one by the end of the year. But until then there’s no timeline for when mitigations become a reality.

Both parties agree its unlikely Summit County gets the junction on UDOT’s list of projects this legislative session. Unlikelier still, Councilmember Roger Armstrong has said, is getting money from the state during a relatively tight budget year.

Stanworth said Dakota can’t develop a detailed plan in 5 days for the Feb. 13 special meeting, only high-level ideas.

He and the council decided to postpone the public hearing initially scheduled for Feb. 15.

That likely means the Feb. 20 final decision is postponed too. County officials had hoped to reach a decision before the end of the Utah legislature's general session March 1.

The scheduled work sessions are still happening, for now.

The next one is 11 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13, at the Summit County Courthouse in Coalville. It will also be streamed online.