As a Park City homeowner for 20 years, I am becoming very disillusioned by the direction our community is taking — morphing from the land of wonder to the land of “no.”
Park City has always been a place to pursue passions. From mining silver in the late 1800s to enjoying skiing, snowboarding, hiking and mountain biking in our beautiful mountain backyard today.
Along the way, millions of others have visited us to experience this magical place and its people and have left with great memories. Some of those people have stayed to call it home, contributing to the community and growing our base.
As always, this growth leads to hard choices — how to move forward while not losing the magic that we have. Decisions around preserving the open space while optimizing our developed areas to secure our economic stability are core to this as we strive to accommodate this growth.
We have two of these decisions in front of us now — what to do with the Bonanza 5-acres parcel and whether to support lift upgrades at Park City Mountain Resort. Both projects have experienced long delays due to the inability of our community and leaders to agree on a path forward.
Now, these projects finally have momentum to move forward, but they continue to face some ongoing community resistance.
The Bonanza 5-acres parcel provides the opportunity for us to build a new town center where small businesses can thrive and working residents can live, access transportation and City Park, and congregate in green space.
This industrial area has been an eyesore for years and the promise of an arts district has come and gone. The parcel remains one of the few areas in Park City which can increase economic development, which is especially important given much of that tax revenue growth has moved outside our city limits.
The Park City Mountain Resort lift upgrade eliminates areas of frustration for locals and guests to get up the mountain and alleviates the major bottleneck around the Miners Lodge area.
Further investments to improve flow as well enhance the look of the Park City Mountain base area would be valuable as well, but the proposed lift upgrades are no-brainers from my standpoint as a frequent user.
We have a decision to make around whether we want to participate in the economic growth of the greater Park City area around us or continue to be left behind. While passionate discourse shows we care, changing our collective attitude to a “Yes, and” mindset may help us productively work together to improve this place we live, play, and love.
Forrest Danson
Thaynes Canyon