Salt Lake-based Dakota Pacific Real Estate wants to develop 50 acres it owns next to the Skullcandy headquarters. Summit County has asked the company to help it build a town center next door, too.
Before plans are final, county leaders have scheduled a public hearing for Thursday, Nov. 7.
“The purpose of the public hearing isn't to necessarily elicit feedback on the final product. Is to elicit feedback on the proposal,” Council Chair Malena Stevens said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” last week. “We've gotten it to a place where we feel that there's a lot of good pieces to this project—as far as the public-private partnership in particular—so we want to understand, is this something that the public is interested in?”
See the slide deck Dakota Pacific will present below.
What's the developer asking for?
Dakota Pacific owns land around and mostly west of the Skullcandy headquarters. Its current development agreement with the county only allows tech offices—what Council Vice Chair Tonja Hanson has approximated as 24 more Skullcandies.
In 2019, the company applied to amend the agreement so it could build housing. That set off years of negotiations about density and affordability. The current proposal is a 750-unit neighborhood, with a third of the units as affordable housing.
Some of the housing would be reserved for people making 44% or 80% of Summit County's median income (AMI), but most of it would be for those making 60% AMI.
What is the public-private partnership?
The county and developer were in the weeds of negotiation in April when councilmembers presented a counterproposal that involved a public-private partnership to reimagine the Kimball Junction Transit Center and library, which is in the Sheldon Richins Building.
The parties took talks private to see if it could work, and in September, they debuted a masterplan that basically cuts the project site in half. Dakota Pacific's neighborhood is too the west of Skullcandy, and to the east, a "town center."
It would involve a larger transit center with underground parking, a mixed-use plaza with a pedestrian bridge to eastern Kimball and 167 more affordable housing units. A new library would be built next to Skullcandy, where the county would share office space with the audio tech company.
Read more: Summit County will purchase Skullcandy building, land and lease
The 167 units of additional affordable housing bring the total residential density up to 917 units. A potential continuing care retirement community (CCRC) is not included in the density metric because of its business license.
Read more: New Dakota Pacific plan concentrates open space near rest of Kimball Junction
Dakota Pacific has explored assisted living options but says operators don't think Summit County's population can support the size of facility it has room for. It's promised housing reserved specifically for seniors if it can't deliver a CCRC.
Read more: Profits, land stand in way of replacing Oakley assisted living
What about state Route 224?
Critics of the development worry about the traffic it could bring, and the Utah Department of Transportation has been studying solutions to Kimball Junction's traffic for years. It's expected to make a recommendation this year.
Read more: Fixing Kimball Junction traffic now down to two options
Dakota Pacific has promised to tether its construction timeline to UDOT's potential Kimball Junction improvements.
But just because UDOT decides on a roadmap for Kimball Junction doesn't mean there's money for it. The project has to get on the agency's six-year to-do list. That's where the developer says it can help.
It has told the council it needs to demonstrate to the state government that there's a need for improvements. Some on the council argue that state Route 224 will likely be modified or fixed without any development, but Dakota Pacific says the neighborhood and town center would give traffic fixes additional priority as far as UDOT is concerned.
And state legislators have taken an interest in seeing some kind of project approved. During the 2022 and 2023 general sessions, they passed bills aimed at hurrying Kimball Junction development along.
Read more: Legislature OKs SB84, potentially forcing Dakota Pacific development at Kimball Junction
The latter spawned a lawsuit that's been on pause while Summit County and Dakota Pacific come to the table. The next legislative session begins in January, and the Summit County Council has signaled it would like to finally vote on the project before the end of the year.
Who pays for what?
Dakota Pacific would pay for its 750-unit neighborhood alone. The developer and county are planning to share the costs of the public-private partnership: the town center, transit hub, civic buildings, affordable housing, pedestrian crossing, open space, etc.
Dakota Pacific has presented a loose cost-sharing framework, which included a $39 million buy-in from Summit County, but the council may start to haggle on some of those items after the Nov. 7 hearing.
“It's going to be a better outcome because we're doing it together," Dakota Pacific Director of Commercial Development Steve Borup said during the most recent weekly discussion. "But the intent of what we're proposing is to try to be fair. If we were to do this by ourselves, we'd also be paying for these things”
Councilmember Chris Robinson thinks who pays for what should be determined in part by how much housing Dakota Pacific gets to build.
“We didn't have anything to do with the ask on how many units on your western parcels,” he said about the private discussions about the town center. “Now we have that piece of information.”
What's next?
Before the public process got paused to create a master plan for the town center, the developer and council had been going back and forth with proposals and counterproposals. That hasn't been happening since talks resumed in September.
Read more: What are developers’ economic constraints? Dakota Pacific explains
Once the council gets community feedback this week, it will continue negotiations with Dakota Pacific before a formal decision, likely this year.
How to attend the hearing
The hearing is Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Newpark Resort hotel conference room in eastern Kimball Junction. Residents can also attend virtually at this link: https://zoom.us/j/772302472
Click here to rewatch past county council discussions with Dakota Pacific. This year, discussions were held on April 4, May 9, July 10, Aug. 7, Sept. 18, Sept. 25, Oct. 2, Oct. 9, Oct. 23 and Oct. 30.
