The Summit County Community Planning Lab is a 10-week crash course for residents interested in learning about planning and land use, offered by the county planning department.
Maddy McDonough, who just transferred to the economic development and housing department, runs the program. The fourth edition drew nearly a dozen participants.
She was excited to see them present final projects May 19 since the brainstorms have become brick-and-mortar before.
“Like the housing authority was a project that someone presented on,” McDonough, who now directs the housing authority, told KPCW. “We've had a code amendment that was someone's project that is now in our code… It was about steep slopes, the definition of steep slopes.”
This year, projects ran the gamut from trails to arts to housing. Most related to affordable housing in some way. The class included two new planning commissioners and a cemetery planner.
Will Seggos, the one on the Snyderville Basin Cemetery District board, did a project on proactive county-state relations amid a perceived trend of legislation targeting Summit County.
Part of his project was quantifying how much cheaper it can be for developers to petition the statehouse, rather than the county courthouse.
“And if the state goes and takes over more. Well, man, that's going to save developers a lot of money. Why would they want to put up with the local process?” Seggos said.
Seggos posited a $40 million development financed at an 8% interest rate, and compared the cost of delays to a typical Utah lobbyist retainer of about $150,000.
He thinks a developer might spend $250,000 per legislative session, maximum, but that same developer would be losing $250,000 at a minimum every month its mid-scale project is delayed.
Summit County Public Arts Advisory Board Chair Maureen Lahey highlighted art installations past and future, like the monumental moose and crane slated for Jeremy Ranch and Pinebrook’s roundabouts.
“When I moved to Park City, I was interested that there was a mechanism in place for public art, which is that 1% of any capital project goes to art,” she said.
Snyderville Basin Planning Commissioner Spencer Young’s project visualized a multiuse trail connecting Parleys Summit to Salt Lake City.
Some cyclists already shoot down Interstate 80 to East Canyon on the shoulder.
“Whenever I see it, I think, ‘Gosh, think how many more people would bike or cycle, or even run or e-bike, whatever it is, from Summit County down to Salt Lake and vice versa if there were a nice, safe path to do so,’” he said.
Other participants studied how to promote prefabricated homes and build accessory dwelling units.
Pinebrook resident Alix Suter looked at how to turn the nearby Cline Dahle property into an “intentional community,” the scholarly term for places with high levels of social cohesion, especially intergenerational cohesion, and teamwork.
For McDonough, the program was founded to foster a similar kind of teamwork when it comes to planning Summit County’s future.
“We have this really involved community,” she said. “But we wanted to make sure that that involvement was as effective and efficient as it could be.”
Summit County has more information about the community planning lab program on its website.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW. For a full list, click here.
