Park City Community Foundation President and CEO Joel Zarrow said his dream is to create a “Kiln for nonprofits,” a nod to the upscale coworking brand.
“So, a shared workspace,” Zarrow told KPCW at a Summit County open house June 16. “There might be some anchor tenants, but not every nonprofit in our community needs five days of space. They can't afford market-rate rent. They need some stability, so they can secure their future.”
That future could be on land to be developed by Six Ridge Partners, formerly Dakota Pacific Real Estate, in western Kimball Junction.
Six Ridge has asked Summit County Manager Shayne Scott to amend its development agreement with the county to make it happen. Expanding the footprint would also allow for a new Kimball Art Center and Park City Visitors Center.
Before he signs off, Scott organized an open house to share the plans publicly at the Kimball Junction library June 16. It was mostly attended by government, nonprofit or business insiders.
Nonprofit leaders at the event told KPCW people in their sector have been talking behind the scenes for years about creating a shared hub.
Kris Campbell, who works with Mountain Mediation Center and Summit Pride, said he has an email list with 58 people interested in the possibility.
“Because all these building things are happening already, it's kind of accelerating the pace of these discussions,” Campbell said. The Utah Nonprofits Association says there were 412 nonprofits registered in Summit County as of 2024.
Park City’s Bonanza Park neighborhood used to have a coworking space for nonprofits, founded around the time of the 2008 global financial crisis.
According to longtime local nonprofit professional Shelley Gillwald, landowner Mark Fischer provided a basement at a “nominal rate.” The office, with its shared conference room, was a boon for nonprofits at a time when fundraising was difficult, she said.
“We weren't having to pay for overhead when we were working hard to continue to fund our operations,” Gillwald said in an interview. “The other thing is that it was collaborative. It was great to be able to pick the brains of other executive directors, whether it was shared resources, sometimes shared volunteers.”
Zarrow thinks a space in Kimball Junction could recreate that collaborative spirit. He said the community foundation has no plans to relocate its Prospector headquarters, at least not for the next two years.
“It's way too early to say whether we're moving anywhere, or not. We haven't been talking numbers yet,” Zarrow said. “We just want the opportunity to explore, and that's what this is.”
He also couldn’t say yet whether PCCF would own the coworking space, although it would likely be an “anchor tenant.”
The hub’s tentative location is on the plaza slated to replace the Kimball Junction library, atop an underground parking garage.
The new Kimball Art Center would be on Tech Center Drive directly west of the former Skullcandy headquarters, where the library and other government services will be.
Six Ridge CEO Marc Stanworth said his company has been having conversations with Kimball Art’s leadership “on and off over the last several years.”
“That was kind of the first domino in all of this,” Stanworth told KPCW. “After we got through the approvals, they reached back out and said, ‘yeah, can we talk again about trying to get something done?’ And we worked very quickly with them, said, ‘absolutely, we'd love to have you here.’”
He added that construction on the 50-acre, mixed-use development may begin later this year or in the spring of 2027.
Scott told KPCW June 17 he plans to approve changes to Six Ridge's development agreement within about a week. The proposed amendment would add 50,000 extra square feet of commercial space: 30,000 for the Kimball Art Center; 10,000 for a nonprofit hub; and 10,000 for a new visitors center.
The state law that rezoned the area to allow the long contested development gives the county manager the power to amend the agreement, not the Summit County Council.
Summit County, the Kimball Art Center and the Park City Community Foundation are financial supporters of KPCW.
