County councilmembers are quick to distinguish between a “master plan” and a “site plan.”
“A master plan is more conceptual,” Council Chair Malena Stevens explained on "Local News Hour." “A site plan would be: this is where this building is going to go specifically, and this is more what it's going to look like. Often with a site plan, you're also going to have renderings of what the buildings will actually look like. We're nowhere close to that right now.”
She said the subcommittee was formed in April to assess the feasibility of a public-private partnership on the area spanning the transit and visitor’s centers. It was not to haggle over things like density, building details and the layout.
That committee, which included Dakota Pacific Real Estate staff and councilmembers Canice Harte and Chris Robinson, says a partnership is feasible. So the council will begin hammering it out in weekly discussions during regular council meetings.
“We're now getting it into the more detailed stuff that we said we would do in front of the public,” Councilmember Roger Armstrong said Sept. 18. “And ideally, we will reach some sort of conclusion in, if not a short order, at least in order.”
The council aspires to make a decision on the partnership and on the rest of Dakota Pacific’s proposed development by the end of this year.
Besides working with the county to expand the Kimball Junction transit center and move services from the Sheldon Richins Building into new civic buildings west of Landmark Drive, the developer wants to put in residential units. Those would be farther west of the potential “town center” and civic areas.
It’s been five years since Dakota Pacific filed an application to develop housing.
Some community members initially organized a group opposed to development, and the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission did not recommend its approval.
Current Councilmember Harte was one of the planning commissioners who voted against the development, but he said Sept. 18 the landscape has changed.
“The large part of that reasoning was the impact of traffic around [state Route] 224 and at that point, in 2019, there was nothing on the books. There was nothing kind of really actively working,” Harte said. “I do think something that's different … sort of separate from what Dakota, Pacific and the county is doing in this area, potentially doing, is that there's also a fix for [state Route] 224 or an update to the 224 interchange and this corridor that's happening in parallel.”
One reason to push for an agreement this year is to get state Route 224 on the Utah Department of Transportation’s to-do list as soon as possible, according to Robinson. UDOT is set to decide between two alternatives for Kimball Junction roads around the beginning of 2025.
The other thing happening in parallel is litigation: relations between Summit County and Dakota Pacific devolved into a lawsuit last year; it’s been on hold during subcommittee talks.
The stay is currently set to expire Oct. 8, but may be extended while public negotiations restart.
Public input will be accepted at a future meeting.
