Treasure had already confounded Park City officials by the spring of 2011, seven years after the developers submitted plans to build a project involving upward of 1 million square feet on a hillside overlooking Old Town.
City Hall, in an effort to reach a solution after an impasse in the project talks, crafted a program that would allow the Treasure partnership to shift a portion of the long-standing development rights attached to the hillside to another location. Some at the time saw the program, known as transferring development rights, or TDRs, as a logjam-breaking conservation move that could result in a Treasure deal that located much of the development off the highly visible hillside.
A deal was never reached. Many of those discussions were held in private between City Hall officials and the Treasure partnership. The issues that prevented an agreement are not known, but it is likely there could have been sticking points regarding the value of the Treasure development rights and the eventual location of the rights if they were shifted elsewhere.
It now seems almost certain that a conservation deal will not happen. The Treasure partnership earlier in June relaunched discussions with the Park City Planning Commission on a project that has been under consideration on and off since 2004. The most recent hiatus provided time for the ultimately unsuccessful conservation negotiations.
The Treasure partnership, consisting of the Sweeney family and an investor called Park City II, LLC, has indicated it wants the panel to cast a vote at the end of the current round of discussions, which could last a year or so. It appears unlikely that the Treasure side will be willing to break off talks with the Planning Commission again for another round of conservation negotiations, even though there is probably still support for an agreement among the Treasure critics.
“Why would we agree to take our density off our property, launch it and not know there’s a place where it can land that has value,” Pat Sweeney, who represents his family in the Treasure discussions, said in an interview.
During the talks regarding a conservation deal, even the Treasure side could not reach a consensus on the idea, he acknowledged. Sweeney said the Treasure partnership “took a really hard look” at the potential of transferring development rights, but obstacles to an agreement arose quickly. He said there was difficulty identifying a location to transfer the rights toward. If one was identified, a new planning process would have been required, he said.
“You have to find a property where not only the owner wants it, but the city wants it to happen,” Sweeney said.
The amount of development rights attached to the Treasure acreage was notable during the discussions about a potential shift. The Sweeney family in the 1980s secured the rights as part of an overall approval for the Treasure acreage and nearby parcels. The total of approximately 1 million square feet involved in the current proposal has long been questioned by critics claiming that the 1980s approval did not contemplate a project of that size. They assert the Treasure partnership interprets the 1980s approval too broadly.
There were questions regardless during the discussions related to a shift about whether there was another location inside Park City that could accommodate a project of that size. The City Councilors in office in 2011 limited the development rights that could be shifted from the Treasure site to approximately 8 percent of the overall total. It seemed that a larger portion of the Treasure development rights could later be added to the program if a suitable site was found for a transfer, however.
The City Council at that time also identified places where development rights could be shifted toward, including the Bonanza Park district and Snow Park. Bonanza Park seemed especially intriguing then.
“If people don’t want it here . . . why would they want it in their neighborhood,” Sweeney said.
One of City Hall’s negotiators during the talks about transferring the Treasure development rights to another location was Dana Williams, the mayor at the time. Williams, who left office in early 2014, continues to follow Treasure and testified during the recent Planning Commission meeting.
He declined to discuss the details of the negotiations based on the confidential nature of the talks. The former mayor said he anticipated at the time the sides could reach a conservation agreement during the hiatus in the development talks. He is unsure whether a deal could be reached at this point if the Treasure side was again willing to revisit the possibilities.
“It seemed like we exhausted the potential TDR sites, both identified and unidentified,” Williams said.