Dakota Pacific owns 50 empty acres around the Skullcandy headquarters in Kimball Junction, and it hopes to get the county council’s permission to build housing there. The land is reserved for more tech offices right now.
Now, the developer is poised to partner with the county to overhaul the nearby Kimball Junction Transit Center.
The two parties announced progress on the potential partnership July 10, their first public update since forming a private subcommittee in April.
To-date they’ve contracted three consulting firms.
Ensign Engineering is studying the transit center area’s slope, TranSystems is recommending a more efficient transit center layout and AO Architects is creating the overall design.
“We know that our transportation system, and the transit center, is working because we see people carrying their skis from the library parking lot onto the bus all the time,” Councilmember Canice Harte said. He’s on the Dakota Pacific subcommittee with Councilmember Chris Robinson.
“There's a real opportunity to create a capture parking lot here,” Harte said, “try to get cars off the road and get [skiers] onto the bus system and take them down to the resorts.”
Besides a larger capture lot, the council’s wish list includes a pedestrian plaza with access to businesses, county services and safe passage across state Route 224 to the rest of Kimball Junction.
The existing library building may be razed to make room for more transit and parking.
Summit County recently purchased the Skullcandy building and has said it could replace the Sheldon Richins Building, home to the library and several state and county offices. It may also receive land next to Skullcandy in exchange for the Richins Building land to Dakota Pacific.
The partnership idea grew out of negotiations over developing housing near Skullcandy, but so far the two discussions have been mostly separate.
Robinson said parking is one thing that does need to be planned with a Dakota Pacific’s development proposal in mind. They’re considering a shared parking model.
“You can build a parking lot that can be used during the day by one user and during the evening, or overnight, by another,” Robinson said July 10. “We've created a model to help analyze that, because parking in the [public-private partnership] area is going to be critical and expensive.”
Harte said the tone of discussion has improved when compared to the past four years of the contentious negotiations over housing.
Some current residents organized opposition groups and in 2021 drew a record-breaking crowd of naysayers to a public hearing. One of the chief concerns has been worsening Kimball Junction’s traffic.
But now county officials and the developer both talk in terms of an “opportunity” to deliver solutions.
“One of the things that I believe everybody is taking away from this process is the opportunity that it presents,” Dakota Pacific CEO Marc Stanworth said. “There's kind of this moment-in-time opportunity … some of the ownership change and things that are happening legislatively and [with] UDOT.”
The Utah Department of Transportation could choose a plan to improve Kimball Junction’s car capacity early in 2025. It ditched an idea to sink state Route 224 below-grade and remove the stop lights.
But Summit County is keeping hope for a grade-separated crossing alive and exploring overpasses at Ute Boulevard and Olympic Parkway instead.
Even when UDOT chooses a plan, that doesn’t mean it’s funded. It’s not clear when state transportation officials may give the project money.
State lawmakers tried to hurry things along in 2023, passing a law to greenlight Dakota Pacific’s development plan. The lawsuit Summit County filed in response is on hold while local officials continue considering the proposal.
If the plan is approved, future legislation could help finance parts that aren’t profitable, such as affordable housing. Since pausing litigation, the developer and county have expressed willingness to lobby the legislature together.
Per Harte and Robinson’s July 10 presentation, designs for the area and a public hearing are a few months away. That’s when the partnership plans would merge with discussions about the wider developable area.
The council said it could reach a decision on Dakota Pacific’s development by early next year.
