OCR Text |
Show Energy Crisis Hits Sunn Commenting that they are "responding to the energy crisis" Schick Sunn Classic Productions, Inc. announced Tuesday they are cutting their production schedule back to 1977 levels. According to Al Pederson, Sunn's director of administration, the cutback cut-back will necessitate at least a three-month three-month layoff of one 50-person filming crew. Pederson points to the current :nergy crisis and decreased fuel allocations as cause for the layoffs. Pederson commented that Sunn has been filming at a "feverish" pace ft a mw&.v v& mmm mm nar taut w ti mm Volume Four i' ' ' -W .r , i r ' 1 lV ; It M ,' v 1 - - 1 -T- .": - M &...;; 1 I .., k. School Board President Gary J ceremonies last Thursday. Gas Is For The current energy crisis is creating gas pains across the nation, but in the long run, the fuel shortage may prove a plus for Park City and its summer business. In early May the energy problem induced the state to switch its marketing approach from the out-of-state traveler to the in-state traveler. About the middle of the month, Utah Governor Scott Matheson allocated $104,000 to the new campaign, which includes a 24-page supplement in newspaper weeklies along the Wasatch Front hyping vacation packages that are one, two and three tankfulls away. Jumping on the conservation bandwagon band-wagon is Park City, through the convention and visitor's bureau, and their marketing agency, Axelson Advertising Ad-vertising of Salt Lake City. "We're piggybacking the state's campaign in Park City," said Curt Hawkins of Axelson Advertising. "Our first effort will be packages offering of-fering three nights lodging for the price of two, and seven nights for the price of four." Hawkins noted that the package program has mushroomed from three major property managers in Park City interested to eight members mem-bers now included in the program. The emphasis of the program is to entice visitors from the Wasatch Front to Park City, and to encourage them to stay overnight once they've arrived. : ti I' M ' -- 12 for the past two years, with the major emphasis on prime time television network production "Last year's activities placed Sunn among the top five volume producers in the country for prime time television casting production," Pederson said. "During that time our fuel allocations have fallen, fuel costs have risen dramatically and we have not had time to properly affect repair and maintenance on our equipment and facilities." Sunn currently maintains approximately ap-proximately one hundred vehicles " . I Boyle congratulates graduating Park High seniprs during Not A Pain Park City "The idea is to get people to stay overnight and spend money on Main Street," Hawkins said. "We're shooting for Arts Festival as the target date for the real "hanger" to hang this package program on. We're trying to get festival-goers to spend two nights in Park City, rather than drive in for the day." The first in a series of advertisements adver-tisements created by Axelson Advertising Adver-tising to make the energy crisis a plus features an old-time miner, and his trusty stead, remarking, "It costs me more to feed my mule than to drive to Park City." "We're running less than 30 percent per-cent occupancy through the summer in Park City," Hawkins commented. "So we're using this energy conservation conser-vation program to our advantage. We're shooting for a 10 to 15 percent higher occupancy level. It's basic marketing theory take a minus, turn it into a plus, and get as much mileage out of it as you can." Hawkins noted that the average destination tourist in Utah spends 1.6 days in the state. "We're after three days," Hawkins said. "And we're leaning on things like the Alpine Slide, the Piute Outfitters, Outfit-ters, the Heber Creeper and golf. My own feeling is it's time Park City merchandises itself to local people. We've got a heck of a lot here, and as the summer gets hotter, those people down in the city are going to find Page 3 Chairman Burnis Watts talks about the ins and outs of the Planning Commission in Part 6 of a continuing series of interviews. and occupies nine facilities in the Salt Lake City and Park City areas. The reduced production period will be used to conduct maintenance on vehicles, equipment and facilities. Pederson noted there will be "no major effect" on Park City and no loss of business to the company due to the cutback. He said Sunn's primary customers are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and ViaCom, a large television sales company, and both have agreed to postpone delivery on forthcoming productions. Pederson further remarked that June that cool mountain air very attrac tive." Hawkins remarked that a summer occupancy rate of 30 percent is "very high" for Park City, which traditionally has become a ghost town after the snow has melted. "We have to merchandise Park City," Hawkins stressed. "We have to offer these package deals, and the merchants and lodges that maintain consistent hours throughout the season will be the ones that benefit. If we want to pretend we are the Riviera with Warren Beatty dropping in for a visit, that's fine. But we aren't the Riviera, and we need to attract at-tract people here." Many of the large property managers in Park City are behind Axelson Advertising and their marketing approach, and sure enough, despite the fuel crunch, business is looking up for the summer. sum-mer. "The bookings are up over this same time last year," said Bob Wells of Moana Corporation, manager of over 300 units in Park City. "We expect ex-pect our vacation-type business to be up because of the gas problem. We're pitching our advertising toward that, along with the state, which is promoting vacations in Utah." Wells said group bookings through Moana are also up because of their new 2,400-square foot convention Continued On Page 8 : t v. i; k the "catch-up" period would have no negative side effects on future business for Sunn. Currently the company is completing "Beyond Death's Door" based on the national best seller by Dr. Maurice Rawlings. In July, Sunn expects to begin principal prin-cipal photography of another theatrical film, "In Search of Historic Jesus." Later this year, two other features based on popular books, "People's Temple People's Tomb" and "Hangar 18" are scheduled to begin production. In the television end of Sunn's production schedule, Pederson said 7, 1979 Sewer District May Need Another New Plant The construction of another new treatment plant may be necessary for the Snyderville Basin Sewer Improvement Im-provement District, based on indications in-dications that the population in the district will be twice that originally estimated. District director Bruce Decker commented Monday that at a recent meeting with the Summit County board of commissioners, he was informed in-formed the population projections for areas outside Park City topped 40,000 by 1995. Adding the projected 18,000 : population figure for Park City, the district now is looking at providing sewer service for nearly 60,000 people in a plant designed for half that number. The treatment plant now being built on the east side of Interstate 80 north of Kimball Junction ultimately will have a capacity of 3 million gallons. Based on a rough estimate of 100 gallons per day per person, that plant can serve 30,000 people. Decker emphasized that Park City is in no danger of suffering from the rapid growth in the district, because prior negotiations have reserved 2.3 million gallons per day of treatment plant capacity for the city. The rest of the district, however, has but 700,000 gallons per day allocated to it. "We are studying the possibility of an additional plant to be located in the Silver Creek drainage," Decker said. "It probably will be a one million gallon-per-day capacity expandable to two million gallons." Decker said the county commissioners com-missioners are in favor of constructing construc-ting an additional plant in the Silver Creek area because of plans to develop an industrial park there. "They consider the industrial park to be a boon to the county," Decker said. "So the development of the new plant will depend on how fast the park develops. We may be putting in the new plant there before we expand our other new plant," he added. "I want to emphasize that further expansions of the new plant or the development of an additional plant will be paid for by the new developments develop-ments themselves," Decker remarked. "We're not going to pop up with another bond election for service outside Park City. If a guy wants to develop, we look to him first for funding." Asked if the county commissioners were concerned over the problems facing the sewer district, Decker responded, "If you didn't know what Niagara Falls looked like, you wouldn't be concerned if you were on the upriver side. No one saw this rapid growth coming, and it leaves us doing a master plan for 60,000 and that's what we're doing." Aiding the district in creating the master plan is the engineering and planning firm of Kaiserman Page 7 Snyderville resident Robert Wright points out the benefits of his homemade hydroelectric plant. NBC has contracted for the development develop-ment of three two-hour pilot projects for filming between September and January. In addition, NBC has paid $500,000 for recasting and further development of the television pilot film "Earthbound" which was partially par-tially filmed by Sunn recently in Salt Lake and on Park City's Main Street. ViaCom, one of the world's largest television sales companies, also is currently developing several projects with Sunn to be filmed later this year for both international and domestic television syndication, Pederson said. Park City's Only Associates Inc. of Salt Lake City. The $40,000 engineering study is being funded by the Four Corners Regional Commission, made up of the governors gover-nors of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Nevada. By commission com-mission approval, federal dollars are allocated to projects within the five-state five-state area. Director of planning for Kaiserman is Park City Planning Commissioner Greg Lawson, who outlined the intent of the study. "The district needs a study because of the demand for line extensions," exten-sions," Lawson said. "Rather than have lines that crisscross all over the valley, the objective is to create a master plan to determine the optimum op-timum extension schedule." Central Reservations Is Sold Again For the second time in little more than a year, Park City Central Reservations has been sold, this time to a California corporation. Last year's sale of the reservation company was part of an out-of-court settlement of an $8 million anti-trust suit brought against them by Global Sports Tours. That suit contended that the lodging associations of Park City and Alta conspired and attempted attemp-ted to monopolize the marketing of package ski tours in Utah, horizontally horizon-tally competing with Global for customers purchasing ski tours through travel agents and airline tour desks. The Park City Lodging Association board of directors last April decided not to "throw good money after bad" to determine the h 'A Tom Hansen at work at one consoles. "This won't have a long term effect on either Park City or Utah," reiterated Sunn's publicist Steve Saunders. "We've had two full-time crews going full bore for the past 18 months, and now we'll be takine a breather to do some needed mainten ance work." Saunders commented that at the end of the layoff period, Sunn most likely will seek to rehire the same production crew to maintain continuity, con-tinuity, although there are no guarantees that those 50 people still will be available. Locally Owned Newspaper Number Thirty-EighT "The most significant thing turned up so far is the discrepancy between be-tween the original population projections projec-tions and what now has been discovered to be the case," Lawson continued. "Sewer service is a big contraint to development." Lawson noted that other elements of the study will include an economic analysis of the cost of extending the lines versus the revenues. "Another one of the elements in the study are the environmental impacts associated with development," Lawson said. "The district has some responsibility to not allow unnecessary un-necessary adverse impacts to occur." oc-cur." Continued On Page 8 legality of the suit, and settled out of court. After the sale to Global Sports Tours, June 1, 1978, Park City Central Cen-tral Reservations continued to operate just as it did under ownership owner-ship of the Park City Lodging Association. The only exception was that Park City reservations were booked through Global 's Salt Lake City office. The company serves as a central telephone exchange for visitors to find room availability in any lodge in Park City. Central Reservations Manager Tom Hansen said Monday that the Park City service and some projects, assets and key personnel of Global Sports Tours have been sold to First Continued On Page 8 V of Central Reservation s compuiei h I weather Dry weather is expected through the weekend with a slow warming trend. Highs will be in the 70s with lows in the 40s. |