The post Mile Post 2023 appeared first on Park Record.

Welcome to The Park Record’s 2022 edition of Mile Post, our annual report on key indicators in our changing community.

The post Park City Mile Post 2022 appeared first on Park Record.

The post Park City Mile Post 2021 appeared first on Park Record.

2021 marked the return of the performing arts to Park City. The coronavirus pandemic swept the rug out from under such organizations as the Park City Institute, the Egyptian Theatre, Mountain Town Music and the Park City Beethoven Festival. But these local performing arts nonprofits, along with the Utah Symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival and the Deer Valley Concert Series, orchestrated the return of a full summer of performances that included blues great Robert Cray, the Beach Boys and the Park City Follies.

Park City Institute, after scheduling, postponing and rescheduling its Main Stage fall and winter lineup and its Big Stars Bright Nights summer series, took a leap of faith and kicked off the summer with Parsons Dance on July 3 at the Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.

The season continued without a hitch for the nonprofit, apart from the postponement of an event features author Stephanie Land due to the Parleys Canyon Fire.

“We are so proud of the diverse lineup of performances we were able to present at the Eccles Center over this past summer,” said the nonprofit’s executive director Ari Ioannides in an open letter to patrons. “Thanks to patrons like you, we were able to join us for a safe and satisfying summer of live entertainment.”

The series also featured a free performance of Americana group Upstate on July 10, as a way to thank patrons for sustaining the Park City Institute during the pandemic.

Park City Institute also partnered with the Park City Beethoven Festival for Chamber Music at the Eccles series held on Sunday afternoons.

Performances started with the music of Beethoven synchronized with Charlie Chaplin’s most famous silent film, “The Gold Rush,” and continued with other live performances by The Reverón Trio and virtuoso pianist Stephen Beus.

The series was so successful that both the Park City Institute and Beethoven Festival decided to continue their partnership through the winter, said Beethoven Festival founder Leslie Harlow.

“The Park City Institute has been really great to work with,” Harlow said. “They are really into the concerts. They are enjoying them, too.”

In addition, the Park City Beethoven Festival, which celebrated its 38th anniversary this year, presented a summer-long string of in-person performances for its Chamber Music in the Park series at City Park and the Beethoven at the Barn series at McPolin Farm.

The concerts were held with one stipulation that all attendees would follow the festival’s COVID-19 protocols, said Harlow.

While the Beethoven Festival enjoyed in-person performances, the Egyptian Theatre, which had been shuttered since March 2020, also sprung to life.

The theater’s annual musical-spoof fundraiser, “Park City Follies,” opened with a string of sellout performances in the 351- seat venue.

After canceling shows every few weeks during COVID-19, the Egyptian Theatre now has an itinerary of rescheduled dates through August 2022.

“We booked our shows in reverse, meaning we started booking shows for next summer, and then scheduled the other shows closer and closer to our opening date,” Barton said.

Barton did that in case he has to cancel any more shows as the season progresses.

Mountain Town Music, the nonprofit that usually schedules up- wards of 250 free concerts in Summit County every year, found a way to help mitigate the coronavirus shutdown.

It produced the Door 2 Door concert series, which features local musicians playing live music on the back of a flatbed trailer.

The trailer would be set up in different neighborhoods through- out the county, and people could enjoy the music while socially distancing themselves.

This summer Mountain Town Music began booking regular performances at Main Street’s Miners Park, Park Silly Sunday Market, City Park, the Great Lawn at the DeJoria Center in Kamas, Woodenshoe Park in Peoa and on the Park City Library patio. It was also instrumental in working with the Park City Beethoven Festival for the Chamber Music in the Park series.

In addition, the nonprofit’s director Brian Richards continued to work with Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain Resort on their concert seasons.

Richards was elated to finally book live shows again.

“Getting together to experience live music is important for our well-being, and people are ready to dance,” he said.

The post Mile Post: The show goes on appeared first on Park Record.

As anyone who has seen the black, blue and purple buses and vans driving on S.R. 224 or throughout the Snyderville Basin knows, it’s a new era for public transit in the Park City area. Summit County’s High Valley Transit launched this summer after county officials decided to end their long-term partnership with City Hall on Park City Transit and instead create their own bus system with an eye toward expanding service levels in the greater Basin region. As a result of the change, Park City Transit now operates primarily within city limits.

While officials intend for the two systems to co-exist seamlessly — a rider can take a High Valley Transit bus from Kimball Junction to Park City Mountain Resort, for example, then board a Park City Transit bus to reach another destination in town — the split is nonetheless a significant shift after Park City Transit was the area’s sole provider for so long.

One of the major changes riders have seen, apart from High Valley Transit’s distinctive color scheme and a few route alterations, is an offering known as microtransit. High Valley Transit launched the service in May, allowing users in the Basin to order rides in an app, similar to Uber or Lyft. Within minutes, a van arrives at the user’s location and drives them to their destination.

In the initial months since the microtransit service got rolling, it seems to be a hit. According to data from High Valley Transit, it had served more than 26,600 passengers through mid-August, while in July, 125 people used the offering more than 20 times.

Microtransit, though, isn’t the only new wrinkle High Valley Transit is eyeing. Officials say the next step for the system, which currently extends into the East Side with a route to Kamas and Francis, could be Heber City. That’s long been identified as a need given the amount of workers who commute into the area from Wasatch County, and it could help alleviate rush- hour congestion on S.R. 248.

It’s likely that such an arrangement, which would require a partnership between Summit and Wasatch counties, is still a ways off. But Summit County officials, who have expressed a desire for High Valley Transit to eventually serve a greater portion of the Wasatch Back, seem eager to make it a reality.

“This has been a long time coming,” County Manager Tom Fisher said this spring. “… I think, within the next two years, you’re going to see some decent progress to getting transit on the ground between the two counties.”

The post Mile Post: New bus system steers into town appeared first on Park Record.

When it comes to construction and renovation it has not exactly been a quiet summer in the Park City area. As the community continues to grow, its infrastructure requires updating. While many of those improvements are still up for debate at city and county council meetings or at the state capitol, others have been underway for months. One need only drive from one end of town to the other, or from Park City west to Salt Lake City or east toward Wyoming, to see it.

S.R. 248
S.R. 248, or Kearns Boulevard as it’s known inside Park City, has been in vary- ing states of repair and construction since early July. A $2.9 million Utah Department of Transportation project includes repaving the length of the road from S.R. 224 to U.S. 40. The repaving work, as well as curb cuts to conform to federal standards for pedestrians (including the differently abled), were scheduled to be completed in late summer.

The most substantial stage of the project involved widening a 700-foot section of S.R. 248 as it curves near the intersection with Richardson Flat Road. The widening extends the road outward toward Silver Creek to accommodate a shoulder-running bus.

That bus lane could be a future component of a bus rapid transit system, which officials hope can help ease the area’s traffic problems.

UDOT is also planning to install a traffic light at the intersection of Richardson Flat Road and S.R. 248 sometime this winter.

A traffic light planned on S.R. 248 at the intersection of Browns Canyon Road is scheduled for completion this fall, as well.

S.R. 224
Summit County officials this summer took on a major repaving project in the Kimball Junction area, which included removing two inches of existing surface on everything west of S.R. 224 and repaving it.

Quinn’s Junction park-and-ride
Park City is moving forward with plans for a new park-and-ride lot at Quinn’s Junction, which would include nearly 500 stalls and may be completed in 2022. The additional bus lane made possible by UDOT’s widening work on S.R. 248, Park City officials have said, could be used to run passengers from the park-and-ride lot into town.

Other UDOT projects
According to UDOT, notable further projects recently completed or currently underway include:

• Rehabilitation of the eastbound I-80 interchange bridge from Echo Canyon Road in Emory, which should be completed by summer of 2022.

• Rehabilitation of I-80 from the Hi-Ute Ranch to Silver Creek Junction along with the Silver Creek and I-80 ramps and paving at the Silver Summit Interchange

• Pavement preservation on S.R. 302 at the Rockport State Park, including repaving the boat ramp parking lot and structural maintenance work

• Rehabilitation of the flyover ramp from northbound U.S. 40 to westbound I-80, including resurfacing of the ramp and replacement of concrete barriers

Looking ahead, the summer of 2022 does not appear to be any less busy. Work scheduled next summer includes median improvements and deck preservation on I-80, shoulder widening and rumble strip installation on the Mirror Lake Highway and retaining-wall repairs on S.R. 224 in Park City.

For more information on state, county and city transportation projects visit udot.utah.gov, summitcounty.org and parkcity.org.

The post Mile Post: Growing pains appeared first on Park Record.

It’s a good time to be selling a house in the Park City area. Plenty of people see it as an opportune moment to be buying one, as well.

The Park City real estate market has continued to boom in 2021, a continuation of a record surge that started in the months after the coronavirus pandemic hit and people began flocking here for access to outdoor recreation and wide-open spaces.

According to second quarter statistics released by the Park City Board of Realtors, the number of single-family home sales rose 65% between April and June in Summit and Wasatch counties compared to the same period in 2020, while condo sales increased 76%. The median sales price for single- family homes soared to $1.44 million on the Wasatch Back, a 58% spike, while that figure hit $717,600 for condos, a 9% increase.

Activity was particularly brisk in Park City proper and the Jordanelle area, but nearly every area the Board of Realtors tracks saw increased sales — of both single-family homes and condos — and higher sales prices.

Jamie Johnson, the CEO of the Board of Realtors, said the trend of people coming to Park City to ride out the pandemic seems to still be at play.

“I do think that’s still the case,” she said. “I think that there’s the component of so many other states are not as progressive as Utah has been when it comes to schools reopening, to the community reopening, and so we’re seeing individuals who may want to move away from the areas that they’re in where their kids can’t go back to school, or their families aren’t able to re-engage into the community.”

A lingering question that many Parkites have is whether the buyers who’ve moved here during the pandemic plan to stick around when the crisis is over.

To Johnson, it’s still too early to say. But it’s possible that after a few winters of shoveling snow, some will decide to return to where they came from.

“There’s still so much uncertainty in our country and the direction of the pandemic and what’s going to happen,” Johnson said. “I don’t think there can be a call on that yet. I think, just personally, that people came here for the lifestyle and for the beauty of our state and area, but I could see in a few years there being this exodus back to where they came from because if they came from Southern California, this isn’t Southern California. (But) there’s too many factors to give an answer to that question, honestly.”

Regardless of whether the newcomers ultimately put down roots, Johnson sees plenty of reason to believe the real estate market in Park City will continue at something similar to the current pace. That’s true even if the industry nationwide, which has surged since last spring, slows over the next couple of years.

Perhaps the only hiccup in the market is a tight inventory, which Board of Realtors President-elect Rene Wood said is likely to be an “ongoing issue for a while,” even in places like the Heber Valley where the bulk of homes in the area are being built. But inventory shortages are unlikely to reverse the sales trends seen since last spring.

“Over many years, we can see statistics showing that our market doesn’t ebb and flow like the rest of the country does,” Johnson said. “Even in the downturn of 2008, (Park City) didn’t dip the way the rest of the country dipped. So I don’t know that I see this major fallout in the next few years. I think we’ll continue to be this place people want to live and people want to have second homes.”

Beyond the horizon

While the Heber Valley and Kamas Valley may not have the allure and name recognition of Park City, people are finding out that they have plenty to offer prospective homebuyers. Those areas continue to be two of the areas in the region experiencing significant growth.

According to second-quarter data from the Board of Realtors, single-family home sales were up 26% in the Heber Valley and 50% in the Kamas Valley. They saw increases in the median sales price of 40% and 45%, respectively.

Rene Wood, the Board of Realtors’ president-elect, said buyers who can’t afford a place in Park City or the Snyderville Basin see the areas as attractive alternatives. They have their own amenities and perks and are still within a short drive of the ski resorts.

“Heber Valley has always been the place where people come in, they look in Park City and can’t afford Park City … so they come over the hill over here,” Wood said. “But our prices have gone way up.”

The post Mile Post: Boom times continue appeared first on Park Record.

The Park City area’s trail system might be getting too big for its own good.

Reports of conflicts on the trails seem to be occurring more often as more people take advantage of what has long been a local source of pride: a trail network hundreds of miles long that twists along hills, ridges and valleys.

While the trails have long been popular, usage seemed to explode during the early months of the pandemic and does not seem to have abated.

Anecdotes abound about hikers and bikers from the Salt Lake Valley — and recent Park City transplants — arriving to local trailheads by the droves, crowding trails and leaving bags of dog poop for others to clean up.

Hard data, however, is not readily available to measure year-over-year trail use.

The Snyderville Basin Recreation District and the Mountain Trails Foundation manage much of the trails in the area, with Basin Rec controlling trails mostly in the Basin and Mountain Trails overseeing those in Park City proper.

The Summit County Council started to look seriously at trail overcrowding issues after it heard in 2019 that cars parked on the side of the road near popular trail- heads could pose access issues for emergency vehicles.

The issue was compounded by tales of tailgaters enjoying post-ride beverages on private property.

At a County Council meeting in April, Councilor Roger Armstrong urged Basin Rec officials to diagnose the problem and find remedies for it.

“I do have an obligation to have a conversation with some of you if they say somebody is barbecuing on my front lawn, literally,” he told Basin Rec officials.

To address the problem, Basin Rec hired enforcement officers, marked more than 10,000 feet with “no parking” signs and issued hundreds of parking tickets, mostly around Rob’s Trail in Sun Peak and in Summit Park.

“No parking” signs have also been posted on Guardsman Pass, another busy area with packed trailheads.

But the parking issues are only one aspect of the problem. Finding seclusion on the trails is becoming harder, as well, with hikers and mountain bikers having to co-exist on narrow trails while moving at very different speeds.

Private van shuttles can often be seen with a dozen or more bikes strapped to their roofs or back windows taking riders from the Salt Lake Valley to the Park City ridgeline.

Recently, Park City has started a free transit shuttle people to some of those same trailheads to try to alleviate parking issues.

There is a sense that users from the Salt Lake Valley are at the root of the overcrowding issues, coming up Parleys Canyon to take advantage of an amenity Park City-area residents pay for. Voters in Park City and the Snyderville Basin have voted to tax themselves for trails and open space bonds worth nearly $200 million since 1995.

During a public hearing for a Basin Rec tax increase in 2019, many people asked why officials couldn’t charge people from the Wasatch Front to use the trails.

One idea is to send out annual trail permits with the property tax bills that go to the areas that help pay for the system. Officials have repeatedly said that trying to enforce such a permit system would cost more than any proceeds.

Still, in June, Summit County Councilor Doug Clyde said that a permitting system is almost inevitable.

“We are providing trail service on our nickel — on the county’s residential owners’ nickel — to the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley,” he said. “… I think that it will become absolutely necessary for us to control trail access by permits in the future.”

Basin Rec officials say that might create more problems, with users attempting to skirt the regulations by parking away from the more well-trafficked trailheads, leading to more conflicts at neighborhood trailheads.

For years, county planning officials have required developments to build trails and tie in to the local trail network. Officials are now hearing that the once-quiet neighborhood trailheads are becoming quite popular.

Basin Rec officials say the ultimate goal is to make it possible to access trails without using a car. They envision a shuttle system that can drop hikers or bikers in the middle of the trail network, allowing the users a more secluded trail experience and alleviating trailhead conflicts.

That solution is apparently years away if it comes at all.

In the meantime, Basin Rec officials have said they will concentrate on instituting directional trails and will slow down on building new trails to work on the necessary infrastructure to support the existing stock.

The post Mile Post: Trampled underfoot appeared first on Park Record.

Some people call it the “shoutiest debate on the internet,” and with good reason — the lack of not only affordable housing but housing in general impacts communities on a national level. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, for instance, says there is a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes, affecting 11 million low-income families.

In Utah, Summit County and much of the rest of the state are feeling the crunch — and have been for quite some time. The challenge of satisfying the need for affordable housing was an issue long before the pandemic occurred.

“The real race is to create more dwelling units than households,” said Jeff Jones, economic development director for Summit County. “From 2010 to 2020, the housing gap in Utah shows a shortage of 44,500 units. It used to be that we developed enough housing units to where we could keep this in balance, but it’s become more challenging, particularly coming out of recession.”

Jones said developers were hesitant to reenter the housing market following the Great Recession, so communities fell behind on housing production.

“But people were still moving into the area for jobs while we fell behind in production, and we’ve been trying to play catch-up ever since,” he said.

Jones said the affordable housing shortage has broad impacts on the Park City community, acting as a force multiplier on issues such as traffic congestion. More people having to commute into Park City to reach their jobs, for instance, increases traffic on S.R. 224 and S.R. 248.

Yet, while most people in Park City support the ideal of affordable housing, not everyone is eager when a development is proposed near their neighborhood.

“The issue of acceptance is also a unique challenge,” said Jones. “Building a home is often a person’s largest investment. Many people don’t react in a positive way to new housing projects going in nearby. So you have the pressure to build more housing, but you also have the pressure of people who are less accepting of new growth.”

However, Summit County is already experiencing natural growth, Jones said.

“The last assessment completed illustrated we have an annual demand for affordable workforce housing around 400 units needed per year based upon our net natural increase and our net migration,” he said.

As winter nears, the need for service and hospitality workers stretches to around 6,000 jobs. Yet only 38.6% of Summit County’s workforce lives in the community, Jones said.

When Jones asked the Summit County Council what percentage of the workforce they want to capture, three council members indicated they’d like to see that number move closer to 50%.

Reaching that goal is likely to be challenging, as the issue of affordable housing has vexed many rosters of local elected officials over the years. But progress is being made.

“We have a number of housing projects in the pipeline right now, and we need to see what our numbers look like after some of those units are complete,” said Jones, referring to units at Silver Creek Village and a workforce project at Canyons Village involving 169 units and 1,100-plus pillows.

When companies move to Summit County, where their employee base will live is part of the conversation. The company must be able to recruit employees. If housing is not available, it jeopardizes the business. Summit County already has an inclusionary requirement, meaning that if a developer builds a new commercial space, they must set aside 20% of a project for affordable housing. Jones confirmed that applies to 80% of the area in Summit County.

“I think everybody is trying to find the best solution for housing affordability,” Jones said. “A lot is happening on the state level where people are trying to understand the needs and examine the best way to facilitate the production of housing. Hopefully, we all get smarter about how we build our cities and communities.”

Jones would like to see future decisions lead to housing that matches the employment sectors. He hopes this amenity-rich environment is something leaders can make available to those who work in Summit County.

“For Summit County, the main thing is we want to be responsible stewards of our environment so that what we pass down to future generations is equal to or better than what we currently have,” Jones said.

The post Mile Post: Affordable housing crunch continues appeared first on Park Record.

The coronavirus pandemic couldn’t stop last year’s Live PC Give PC.
In fact, COVID-19 may have helped the all-day fundraising event that ran from midnight to midnight on Nov. 6 gain a record amount of donors as well as funds for Summit County nonprofits, said Christine Coleman, vice president of communications and marketing for Park City Community Foundation, which organizes the event.

“We had nearly 1,000 more donors than we had in 2019, and that was truly amazing because we were in the midst of COVID,” Coleman said. “We really didn’t know what to expect.”

After tallying the numbers, Live PC Give PC had more than 6,000 unique donors give $3.4 million to 113 nonprofits, according to Coleman.

“We had nearly 1,000 more donors than we had in 2019, and that was truly amazing because we were in the midst of COVID. We really didn’t know what to expect.”

“We raised $1 million more than we did the year before, and I think it’s because people wanted to support all the nonprofits that had supported them during COVID,” she said. “I think people were ready to open up their pocketbooks.”

The numbers continue to amaze Coleman because the day of fundraising had to be executed differently in the past due to safety issues surrounding the pandemic.

“We usually hold the big tally party at High West Distillery, but we couldn’t do that due to COVID-19,” she said. “So we decided to have a parade that wound through many residential areas.”

The Park City Community Foundation also created a three-hour livestream that featured videos from 80 or more nonprofits and interviews with donors and nonprofit executive directors, Coleman said.

“Part of the success is because all the nonprofits did an amazing job reaching old and new donors,” she said.

The foundation also tried to reach people who may not have heard about the fundraiser, Coleman said.

“We appointed Neighborhood Ambassadors, which was new last year,” she said. “They were volunteers who signed up to talk with folks in their neighborhoods, put up some posters and throw socially distanced donation parties. It was all about involving our entire community.”

Coleman also credits longtime donors who celebrate Live PC Give PC as a local holiday.

“There are people who get so excited and take time off of work or their day to volunteer their time,” she said. “They are out on the street corners waving signs and recruiting donors.”

Last year marked Live PC Give PC’s 10th anniversary, and the day of giving has raised more than $16 million for local nonprofits since its inception in 2010, Coleman said.

Still the Park City Community Foundation’s definition of success for Live PC Give PC is not based on the amount of money it raises, she said.

“It’s about how many donors we can get,” Coleman said. “So, the fact that so many people came out last year and gave small, medium and large amounts blew us away.”

The goal for this year’s event, which will be held Nov. 5, is 6,500 donors, she said.

“Because of the coronavirus delta variant, we can’t do the High West party again, so we are going to host an outdoor party under the stars,” Coleman said. “We’re still working on finding a venue, but since it will be outside people will be able to socially distance and we can welcome all ages, unlike High West, which is a bar for ages 21 and older.”

For information about 2021 Live PC Give PC, visit livepcgivepc.org/giving-events/pc21/home.

The post Mile Post: Community steps up appeared first on Park Record.