On Dec. 1, the community convincingly let Dakota Pacific Real Estate know that its proposal for the Tech Center site failed to deliver an overwhelming community benefit. Predictably, Dakota Pacific’s chairman, John Miller, made affordable/workforce housing the false “selling point” of their project (guest editorial March 19-22). While more workforce housing is needed, the Dakota Pacific project will not only fail to improve Park City’s workforce housing shortage, it will make it worse.
Workforce housing is sorely needed and the state of Utah as a whole is around 45,000-50,000 workforce units short. This shortage is evident in Summit County, where housing for seasonal workers, low-income renters and single-family homebuyers is growing more difficult to find.
To address this issue, many communities require new developments to include “affordable” or workforce housing. The cost of these units is typically based on the area median income (AMI). However, this approach needs to be closely examined to ensure workforce units are actually meeting residents’ financial needs.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development considers someone “low income” if they earn less than 80% of AMI. For Summit County, the individual AMI is generally regarded to be between $100,000-$110,000. Thus, the “low-income” level (80% of AMI) would fall between $80,000-$90,000.
As documented in the Sept. 8, 2020, Snyderville Basin Planning Commission meeting, starting salaries for critical workers in Summit County are the following: firefighter, $44,000; sheriff deputy, $48,000; and teacher (with master’s), $60,000. A typical service worker in Park City only earns around $44,000. This means that deed-restricted units targeting 60%-80% AMI are still out of reach for the average member of the workforce.
The original proposed development by Dakota Pacific included new office space, commercial retail and a 120,000-square-foot hotel, alongside 1,100 total housing units. Of these 1,100 units, only 336 units would be considered workforce housing based on 40%-60% AMI.
Unfortunately, the project’s workforce housing units are included in Phases 2 and 3, which are 7-plus years out. Even worse, the 175 units in Phase 3 will be built at the developer’s discretion based on “market demand” and may never be built at all!
On top of that, this proposed project would create a net deficit in Park City’s workforce housing stock. The medical office building, hotel (with gondola) and retail components will create new workforce-level jobs for residents, and the thousands of new residents living in the project will increase the community’s need for police officers, teachers, firefighters and more service-level workers. Outside of the lucky few lottery winners who secure an affordable unit at the development, where will these additional workforce residents live? (Separately we should be discussing strategies to pay our essential workers more so they can afford houses.)
Taking a piecemeal approach to workforce housing won’t address this large and systematic problem. As a 25-year Summit County resident, Mr. Miller could have spearheaded a sensible approach to work with groups like Friends of Summit County, RRAD and Future Park City in driving a public/private partnership that proactively focuses on efficiently addressing workforce housing needs at a master planning level, while still making it profitable for developers. Instead, he decided to work the backrooms of the State Capitol to get his project approved.
With contemplated development projects at Deer Valley, PCMR and Canyons Village, building true workforce housing is critical to the long-term future of this premier family and resort community. Residents should vocally hold their elected leaders and developers responsible to do the hard job of creating a workforce housing strategy that serves the needs of all residents.