The Summit County Council approved the Restaurant Tax Committee’s recommendations April 24.
That distributed the $4 million pot to 53 organizations. 55 applied, asking for over $5.3 million total.
The nonprofit Friends of Ski Mountain Mining History was one of the biggest recipients. The historic preservation organization partnered with Park City Municipal to request $250,000 for Silver King Coalition Mine repairs.
The tax committee awarded $200,000, which Sally Elliott, the organization's founder, said will finance window repairs and interior restoration of the mining structure at the bottom of Bonanza lift.
“We're going to straighten the old window frames and put this lucite there, so people can actually look in the windows and see what's there,” Elliott told KPCW.
That will happen next summer. This summer, the group is installing a new roof.
Three other organizations received more than $200,000, including the Historic Park City Alliance which is looking to market Main Street outside Summit County.
The others were the Park City Area Restaurant Association, receiving about $350,000 also for marketing, and the Park City Area Lodging Association, which got almost $400,000 for its Delta Airlines flight voucher program.
First-time applicant U.S. Biathlon Association received about $108,000 to aid its move from Maine to Midway. U.S. Biathlon announced its offices will move across the county to Wasatch County last September.
To receive a Summit County Restaurant Tax Grant, organizations must demonstrate they will drive tourism in the area and increase restaurant tax revenue. Priority is also given to new and developing organizations or events.
The Snyderville Basin Recreation District and The Weilenmann School of Discovery were the only organizations that didn’t make the cut.
The committee determined Basin Rec’s request for treadmills and Weilenmann’s gift card fundraiser didn’t fit the grant’s tourism focus.
The pot of money has been growing each year, from $2.4 million in 2021 to around $4 million now. The numbers show growth is slowing to pre-pandemic levels.
