Numerous Snyderville Basin residents said they have problems with plans for the Utah Olympic Park at a public hearing Oct. 14.
The Snyderville Basin Planning Commission was scheduled to vote on changes to the UOP’s overall development agreement but decided to delay a vote to November.
UOP wants to build a hotel with a height exception for a second story. The park hopes it will generate revenue for the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation fund, which provides for the maintenance of 2002 Games venues.
But neighbors in Sun Peak were concerned with additional changes to the development agreement besides extra hotel height.
They raised questions about how many square feet the new agreement would allow, and what that means for the hillside’s landscape and habitat.
Nearly everyone who spoke Oct. 14 prefaced their comments with the fact that they support the UOP and want to see it succeed.
“It's been difficult to prepare for this meeting because it's a moving target, and with information tonight it’s moving even more,” resident Jorge Velarde said.
UOLF President and CEO Colin Hilton was resolute that the park isn’t looking for permission to build more than 695,000 total square feet.
But whether that’s an increase or a decrease from what the existing development agreement allows depends on the definition of one term in it: “maximum gross building area.”
Under Summit County staff’s definition of the term, it’s an increase. Under the Olympic Park’s, 695,000 square feet would be a decrease.
The Summit County Council gets the final say on development agreements, after a recommendation from the planning commission. Unusually, staff didn’t recommend that commissioners vote one way or another Oct. 14.
Community Development Director Peter Barnes explained that’s because of “a significant number of unknowns.”
“You're changing a development agreement,” Barnes reminded commissioners. “So what does that finished language say? Are you prepared to say, ‘We understand the intent. We don't know what the final written word is, but we're willing to take the risk and move it up to council?’”
Most of the square footage is concentrated around the training pool. About half of it is a condominium hotel UOP applied for last year, and the rest is mostly housing.
But many residents were unhappy with 10 single-family homesites planned near the top of UOP by its back gate. Housing is allowed in that area in UOP’s existing development agreement.
Resident Bill Wade worried whether the back gate, normally a locked emergency exit, would become a thoroughfare.
“If it's opened, you've now opened a corridor for everyone on a powder day who doesn't want to wait in line from [Kimball Junction] to get to the base of The Canyons, to go all the way up and over,” he said.
Planning commissioners are scheduled to reconsider and possibly vote on the development agreement again until Nov. 25.
Hilton said the big-picture reason behind any development is to help the legacy fund sustain itself ahead of the 2034 Winter Olympics. He said he doesn't want to ask for taxpayer dollars.
“So to do that, I run like a business,” Hilton said. “We're a nonprofit that runs with principles of trying to be efficient and effective and how we operate and find revenue sources that augment the high cost of a high labor-, high energy-, high insurance cost-type of facility. And that is very real, and it's only gotten worse in the last five years.”
Resident Erin Ferguson suggested going to the Podium34 donors instead. But resident Bob Devaney said the legacy fund is vital.
“We have three unbelievable assets to our community, to our kids, to our families and to the community and to the state of Utah, and we as citizens have an obligation to figure out how to make this work, not how to stop it,” he said.
Commissioner Eric Sagerman’s takeaway from the public’s comments was that the more than 5-year controversy over Dakota Pacific Real Estate’s development down the hill looms over the UOP.
“I also think the community in general feels burned because of Dakota Pacific — unrelated to you,” he told the UOP representatives. “So don't take that personally, but I think there's a sense of not having a say of where they are, and a lack of information for various reasons.”
According to Hilton, the legacy fund had $76 million following the 2002 Winter Olympics. Now it has $42 million and is losing up to $4 million annually.
Hilton’s immediate goal is to cut annual losses to $2.5 million.
Summit County and the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation are financial supporters of KPCW.
