They blew in like a fresh breeze through the Park City Council Chamber doors, bringing a burst of enthusiasm in their turn at the podium to a crowded council meeting gone maybe a little grumpy with graybeards who had settled cross-armed at notions of change along Main Street, two former mayors among them.
When the two high school students finished that December evening, the whole room broke into applause, the only applause for a couple of dozen public commenters.
Even the ex-mayors unfolded their arms and clapped, smiling, for the pair who told the council that Main Street needed to be revitalized just as the Main Street Area Plan Committee of residents, business operators and community leaders and city staff had outlined in a long report for the City Council.
Everyone applauded, even though at least half of them were adamantly opposed to all or most of what the committee had proposed.
Afterward, during a break in the meeting, people stopped for a moment at the students’ seats for a kind word, a reporter slipped them a business card, and the current mayor sat with them and loved them up as only she can.
Who are these kids, anyway?
Meet Alec Lebwohl, a sophomore, and Shiva Minter, a junior at Park City High School and members of the speech and debate team. They came to tell the council of their love for Main Street, their hopes for its future, and that frankly, they see it slipping. Something must be done.
They endorsed the broad vision of the Main Street committee formed through discussions since last May that culminated in the Main Street Area Plan.
The effort in part was precipitated from observing that Main Street visitation has dropped 14% since 2021 and is losing market share to other area commercial centers as well as online shopping. Also, the pedestrian experience could stand improvement, according to the city staff report.
The public comment at the Dec. 19 meeting was split evenly among two dozen speakers between endorsing and rejecting all or part of the plan suggesting hotels on Swede Alley, reducing Main Street vehicle traffic to one lane and widening the pedestrian way, and looking into a gondola to Deer Valley and ice rink at the current parking lot at the top of Main, among other enhancements.
As Councilor Jeremy Rubell observed during the meeting: “There is zero consensus in the community, which will make it hard to lead that way.”
Except when it came to the reception to the high school students weighing in, which boiled down to adults thrilled that they would care enough to join the discussion about Main Street’s future.
“I had believed that it was pretty normal for younger people to come speak, and all the excitement took me by surprise,” Minter said later. “To be honest, I was pretty nervous, just because everyone around us was older and more experienced in city affairs than we were, but everyone was very friendly and receiving.”
“I had a wonderful experience,” Lebwohl said. “Everyone was so kind and obviously cared. The council people were obviously willing to listen. It felt like my voice actually mattered, and it made me more likely to do it again in the future.”
Both have lived most of their lives here, Lebwohl coming from Texas as a second-grader and Minter from Oakley in the third grade.
They both serve on Park City High School’s student council. Minter is the junior class president, and Lebwohl is the sophomore class president. Their schedules are tight, as well, between classwork, debate team competition, and for Minter during cross country and lacrosse seasons, and acting for Lebwohl.
He said his dream job would be as an actor.
“I figure I will get my BA in theatre, and if I can’t make it, I will go back to school for my law degree,” he said. His dad is an emergency room physician, and his older brother is training to be a commercial pilot, having earned his first license through the high school’s aviation program.
Minter, whose older brother is a freshman at Yale, has not pinned down a course for college and career, “but I am currently interested in either business or political science.”
Both want to bring their children someday to enjoy a vital Main Street, they said. Like their elders, they want a street that accentuates Old Town’s historic roots and buildings, contributes to Park City’s sustainability in the face of climate change, and is, well, fun.
But if Main Street is not revitalized effectively, they fear for the modern mall environment no one in town wants, they said.
“I loved it so much as a kid,” Minter said. “I just really hope it will carry on, but I don’t think it will be able to sustain itself if we don’t change something. … I don’t think doing nothing would benefit it. If anything, it would make it worse. So I think that’s hard. That’s the crux of the whole thing.”
“Yeah,” Lebwohl said. “I think you just have to be careful. Don’t, like, make it like a Trump Tower.”
They said the range of voices weighing in on Main Street’s future should be broad, including younger people’s.
“I think that a lot of people aren’t keeping in mind the young audience that’s going to also inherit Main Street when these people are long gone,” Minter said. “I think that reaching out to a younger audience what specifically to do with Main Street will give us better insight of what to actually do.”
“We are the ones who will be inheriting that,” Lebwohl said. “We are the ones who will be taking our kids there.”
They said they’d be happy to offer more feedback, and to talk about Main Street with other students in discussions, say, slightly more formally with the student council and the debate team.
In other words, they ventured to the council chambers; perhaps the council might venture to theirs.