Dakota Pacific wants to build housing on roughly 50 empty acres it owns around the Skullcandy headquarters in western Kimball Junction.
The company’s current development agreement with Summit County says it can build tech offices—the equivalent of 24 more Skullcandy-sized buildings—there right now.
During the negotiations to amend that agreement for housing, Dakota Pacific CEO Marc Stanworth has repeatedly said he believes public meetings aren’t the right forum to get into the weeds of a development proposal.
Now, the Summit County Council agrees.
“After relaying the county's most recent revised proposal, we've determined that it would be more effective to convene a subcommittee to work through the details of feasibility instead of doing that during the course of our normal meetings,” Council Chair Malena Stevens announced April 24.
The county has used subcommittees to get through the weeds of development proposals before, as with the Cedar Crest Village proposed in Hoytsville, which began in subcommittee and is now being evaluated in public at the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission.
The Dakota Pacific subcommittee will consist of councilmembers Canice Harte and Chris Robinson, county staff and members of Dakota Pacific.
With only two councilmembers, the meetings won’t have a quorum and therefore won’t need to be public.
“We anticipate the group would meet over the course of a couple of months,” Stevens said. “No decisions or commitments will be made during these meetings, and the entirety of council—along with the public—will be presented with any ideas generated in these meetings in a public setting.”
Stevens says the subcommittee will focus on a potential public-private partnership and land swap, to see if they’re economically possible. The parties have discussed trading the county’s Sheldon Richins Building for land directly west of Skullcandy.
Councilmembers have asked Dakota Pacific to expand the Kimball Junction Transit Center and said a new county services building could go in beside Skullcandy.
