Summit County

Early concepts suggest undergrounding Kimball Junction Transit Center parking

KPCW | By Connor Thomas

Published August 8, 2024 at 5:30 PM MDT

Early concepts suggest undergrounding Kimball Junction Transit Center parking.

On top, a plaza could provide commercial space and pedestrian connections to the rest of Kimball Junction.

In Kimball Junction, the Park City Visitors Center features prominently at the bottom of a hill west of state Route 224.

Up the hill, the Sheldon Richins Building is home to a Summit County library and DMV, and the transit center.

Summit County leaders and a Salt Lake City developer are considering whether they can build a new transit center leveraging that slope.

This cross-section shows where the parking garage is underneath the plaza. It is on the same level as the 12 bus bays envisioned.

“You're essentially seeing two stories that are now underground, and then you have your buildings on top,” Councilmember Harte said, explaining the underground parking garage. “The advantage to putting the transit center in its new proposed location is that it just stays on grade. It's much flatter and level there, so you can kind of go in and out.”

Parking would be built into the hill, mostly underground, and above that, a plaza.

The council has taken inspiration from Millcreek Common in the Salt Lake valley.

“When we toured that—what I envision in this community space is some of the things they did,” Councilmember Tonja Hanson said. “Their splash pad, and they had … an ice skating rink in the winter time. And it was really a nice gathering area.”

The project would be a public-private partnership between two former foes: Summit County and developer Dakota Pacific Real Estate.

The two have paused litigation to reach an agreement about the future of western Kimball Junction, where Dakota Pacific owns about 50 empty acres and where the county will own 13 acres.

The subcommittee has paid attention to how a partnership on the transit center and plaza (right) would need to mesh with what Dakota Pacific ends up proposing for the rest of the land (left). The red dots indicate an active transportation corridor. That could mean a pedestrian overpass or gondola over state Route 224.

The parties have discussed swapping some of that land to create a better transit center and move services from the Richins Building to Skullcandy’s headquarters, which Summit County acquired earlier this year.

Those talks have happened in a private subcommittee, and Wednesday’s presentation to the full county council was one of the committee’s periodic public updates.

The group doesn't yet know if it can finance underground parking, or if it will need to be on the surface.

If they can agree on the transit center’s future, the county and developer’s next task would be to agree on the future of the rest of the property to the west.