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Show B-1 C-1 COLUMNS, A-20 DIAL TURNS ON KPCW'S ACQUISITION OF RADIO STATION The WANTED: VOLUNTEERS HELP YOUR COMMUNITY! BECOME A VOLUNTEER! VOLUNTEER LISTINGS CAN BE FOUND ON PAGE B-7 AERIALS TEAM SHOULD FLY HIGH THIS SEASON A MOTHERLODE WILL BE ON THE AUCTION BLOCK BUSINESS, A-13 VOLUNTEER DOES A PACIFIC BLOB THREATEN A SNOWY WINTER? Park Record. PARK CITY , UTAH | WWW.PARKRECORD.COM Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, December 5-8, 2015 Serving Summit County since 1880 Vol. 135 | No. 87 50¢ PCMR owner pledges it will boost housing Sip 'n shop A bank holiday for a cause on Tuesday Bazaar will benefit business network Vail Resorts will spend $30 million on projects across its territory By BUBBA BROWN By JAY HAMBURGER It was last December and the Park City Women's Business Network invited a handful of merchants to set up shop at its monthly luncheon. The organization's members enjoyed picking up gifts for the holidays. The merchants appreciated the exposure and the chance to make a few more sales during one of the busiest times of the year. Kathleen Barlow, president of the Park City Women's Business Network, and the rest of the group's leadership thought one thing: We should do this again, only much bigger. Like that, the organization's upcoming Sip 'n Shop holiday bazaar was born. The event, which will also serve as a fundraiser for the network's annual scholarship for girls at Park City High School, is set for Tuesday, Dec. 8, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at The Chateaux Deer Valley. "When we started to put the word out, we got a deluge of interest from the vendors," Barlow said. "So we wanted to make it larger and hopefully the crowds will come." Barlow said the Sip 'n Shop will feature more than 40 merchants from the area -- and all but one are women -- making it a perfect way for Parkites to support local businesses while crossing off their holiday shopping list. There will also be drinks and appetizers, as well as a performance by a string quartet from Park City High. Half of the proceeds from the $25 entry tickets, and all of the $25 each merchant paid to participate, will go to the organization's scholarship fund for next year. Barlow is hopeful the group can raise $16,000 for this year's fund, which would top last year's $10,000. "That would be huge for us," she said. Barlow views the event as the perfect convergence of everything the group is about. "This event has three components," she said. "One, it's a fundraiser. Two, it gives a chance for these local merchants to have an audience, and it also gives us exposure as an organization. We're inviting anybody in the community, so people can shop and see friends and learn about our organization. It's important for us to be able to communicate our message and the mission of the membership, which is to support women in business in Park City and the surrounding areas with networking, resources, education." As a holiday celebration, the Sip 'n Shop will cap 2015 for the business network. But the idea is for it to also serve as a jumpstart into 2016. The group has outlined a plan of growth Park City Mountain Resort owner Vail Resorts on Wednesday said it would spend $30 million on employee housing projects across the firm's territory, an effort meant to create options for rank-and-file workers who have long encountered difficulties in tight housing markets like Park City and Vail, Colo. A Vail Resorts release did not provide details about the projects or a precise timeline. The release also did not detail how the $30 million would be split between the resorts the Colorado-based firm owns. Its key properties stretch from Colorado to the Lake Tahoe region of Nevada and California. Bill Rock, the chief operating officer of PCMR, said in a prepared statement he is proud of the commitment shown by Vail Resorts. He said there are opportunities to leverage the $30 million with other resources. "How this will play out in Park City really requires us all to roll up our sleeves and determine greatest areas of need and what potential solutions could look like," Rock said in the prepared statement. The release from Vail Resorts says the firm "is willing to use its own land, capital or commitments to long-term lease guarantees to assist in bringing new employee housing projects to fruition." It acknowledges, though, that "many of these projects will take a number of years to develop . . ." "The availability of affordable housing is critical for the sustainability and vitality of our resort communities and we firmly believe Vail Resorts should be an integral partner in expanding employee housing capacity," Rob Katz, the chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, said in the release. "We are hopeful this new commitment will complement our existing efforts and all of the projects that are already in the works with local government agencies." Diane Foster, the Park City manager, said it is "great news" that Vail Resorts made the commitment to housing. She said there could be opportunities involving partnerships between City Hall and Vail Resorts. She did not provide details but noted City Hall's interests in partnering with the private sector on housing. Housing is a pressing issue in mountain resorts across the West as real estate prices and rents soar, forcing many rank-and-file workers out of the communities where they are employed. That has sometimes led to difficulties in attracting employees and then retaining them. Increases in commuter traffic are sometimes pinned on a lack of housing options for employees in the communities where they work. "Are there other options to explore in Park City and Summit County? Quite possibly, and so let's take a look at them," Rock said. The Rock statement said the $30 million will be put toward housing beyond the units required through previous development approvals. City Hall in the late 1990s ap- The Park Record Please see Sip 'n shop, A-2 3 sections • 46 pages Business...............................A-13 Classifieds ........................... C-11 Columns .............................. A-20 Crossword ........................... C-4 Editorial............................... A-21 Events Calendar .................. C-6 Legals .................................. C-15 Letters to the Editor ............ A-21 Movies................................. C-4 Restaurant Guide................. A-19 Scene .................................. C-1 Scoreboard ......................... B-5 Sports .................................. B-1 Weather ............................... B-2 The Park Record JAKE SHANE/PARK RECORD Parley's Park Elementary School second-grader Wyatt Williamson decorates the Christmas tree at the Zions Bank location at Newpark with a homemade ornament on Wednesday. Eco-conscious, but ‘massive' A hotel proposal along the S.R. 224 corridor criticized as being out of place By ANGELIQUE MCNAUGHTON The Park Record Lisa Farmer Albright and her neighbors in ParkWest Village aren't on board with a new hotel project that is being proposed near their homes. Albright and 15 others met Thursday night to discuss the 55-room hotel project scheduled to be considered by the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission next week. The site would include the Colby School property and what are referred to as the Brookside lots, located in the Snyderville Basin near State Road 224. The Brookside lots are currently vacant and under contract with the applicants. "It's a massive project that is going to impact our neighborhood and we are trying to fight it," Albright said. "This is the last little community we have. We have teachers and attorneys and small business owners here, all sorts of people and we all love our houses and our neighborhood. "They are calling it low-impact, but if that is low impact they are redefining it," Albright said. Albright and several others plan on attending a hearing about the project at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 8, at the Sheldon Richins Building. The hearing allows the public to give their input to the planning commission which will make a recommendation on the low-permit application to Pat Putt, the community development director. As previously reported in The Park Record, the property was acquired last December by Emma Worsley and Julie McBroom. The native Australians have lived in Park City for four years and expressed plans to develop the site as a wellness center. The applicants, listed as TGC LLC and Hoffvest LLC, are requesting approval for 40 individual hotel-room cabins described as ‘eco-cabins,' 15 rooms located inside the existing building, an event center, a bakery, yoga studio and a nearly 5,000-square-foot restaurant. The project will cover more than 13 acres. "We thought it would be beneficial to take this to the planning commission for public review pretty significant project," said Ray Milliner, Summit County planner. The uses the applicant is requesting have already been approved for a portion of the property, which served as an inn for nearly 20 years, Milliner said. The application is to return to the original vested uses through the low-impact process and expand them to encompass the Brookside lots. "Now they are changing the use back to the hotel use with its associated accessories, such as the restaurant, and per the code that is the low-impact permit," Milliner said. Planning commissioners will be reviewing the application to determine if it meets the low-impact criteria. The criteria include examining the impacts the project would have on issues such as traffic, parking, lighting, landscape and construcPlease see Hotel, A-2 Please see Housing, A-2 Group blazes a new trail into South Summit Foundation wants to create network for hikers and bicyclists By DAVID HAMPSHIRE The Park Record Twenty-five years ago, Park City's mountain trail system was little more than a handful of mine roads and enhanced animal trails on private land. You hiked and rode these trails at your own peril, risking injury from lurking branches and incurring the wrath of local landowners. Tom Noaker remembers it well. Noaker has lived in eastern Summit County since 1975 and sold some of the first mountain bikes ridden on Park City trails. Now Noaker and friends are setting out to do in the South Summit area what Mountain Trails Foundation did in Park City: take a scattering of disconnected, quasi-legal dirt tracks and weave them into a sanctioned network accessible from the surrounding communities. "It's very similar, on the ground now, to what it was like here (in Park City) in the '90s when the Mountain Trails Foundation (MTF) started," Noaker said. "We had a bunch of trails. Ninety percent of them were illegal." In recent years, Noaker said, he's had numerous conversations with MTF Executive Director Charlie Sturgis about developing a nonmotorized trail network in the Kamas Valley. He said Sturgis argued that, rather than being served by an extension of the MTF, the South Summit area would be better off with a trail system developed by people like No- NAN CHALAT NOAKER/PARK RECORD aker who lived in the valley. Tom Noaker, an Oakley resident, is the president of the board of the newly formed South Summit Trails Foundation. The organization anticipates its efforts Please see Group, A-8 will resemble the work of Mountain Trails Foundation in the Park City area. VISITOR GUIDE Celebrate the holidays with a group of newcomers The Newcomers of Greater Park City will host its annual holiday brunch at Park City Community Church, 4501 N. S.R. 224, on Wednesday, Dec. 9, from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. A variety of breakfast treats will be served and entertainment will be provided by the Park City Treble Makers, an all-female a cappella choir. For more information, visit www.parkcitynewcomers.org. |