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Show SCORECARD PARK CITY'S BUILDING HEIGHT LIMIT? o Par One of the best 4th of July Parades in recent memory rolled down Main Street in Park City recently. There were marching bands, clowns, vintage cars, stagecoaches, bands and camels, luges, more great floats. What was missing? Not one, count them, not one member of the Park City Council nor the town’s invisible mayor, Brad Olch, ‘ould be found in the July 4th Parade. ou'd think at least one of them, parcularly the mayor, could make the fort; But not to worry, Labor Day is ist a couple of months away and vhen the Miner's Day Parade booms | closer lown Main Street it wi i} lecti lay ihen Tt elechon Gay. p ee wilwill ‘e Mayor Brad Olch and OUNCHIMGaN ger Harlan and some others. What parades to anyway? Emiton, 2 Eagle | 9 says good things don’t happen to id people? Lloyd Evans, Park City ive and long-time police officer and aetimes emcee for community md yhae) vp ys events as been named Chief of Police, Lloyd is 1ore than a good cop, he’s tantamount © a community treasure. Since he’s lived Park City: A Place of People, Not Laws in Park City all his life, Lloyd knows just about everyone and understands that community police work is as much about people as it is about the law. Lloyd replaces Frank Bell, who is moving over to become law enforcement specialist for special events. For the past 15 years, Frank Bell has performed admirably as police chief and is owed a debt of gratitude by everyone in Park City. @ > Bogey In a July 5 letter to the Park City news- paper, The Park Record, Mayor Brad PAGE 2 ¢ JULY 1997 Olch offers condolences to the Gateway free sponsors and volunteers who bought and planted dozens of green ash trees along State Highway 224. The trees died, the mayor admitted, and he is trying fo find out why. Too bad the municipality didn't ask for advice from the Park City Nursery. On the same page, Steve and Ann Barrett give some hints. First of all, buy the right kind of tree, they advise. Secondly, plant them properly. The Barretts say they “are offended by the city's exploration of expert knowledge” in the matter. Perhaps what the good folks at Park City Nursery don't understand is that city hall in Park City has become the source of all knowledge. Why would they ask for advice, when, apparently, they already know everything there is to know on every subject. Trees, apparently, not withstanding. f there ever was a question whether zoning and development laws are applied evenly to everyone in Park City, the recent approval of the Park City Ski Area's behemoth project should set the record straight. In Park City, it would seem, who you know is quite important. More important, perhaps, than the law. The ski resort, recently acquired by Salt Lake City mogul Ian Cumming, has gained approval for a massive housing and commercial development from the Park City Planning Commission. That by itself shouldn't be cause for alarm, but the development will be twice as high as the Park City Land Management Code allows. In reality, that means that buildings at the ski area, now re-named the Park City Mountain Resort, will build to city council. Flagstaff developers were pressured and pressured and pressured to downsize the development. By sharp contrast, the ski resort’s project was met with open arms from the get go. Despite the design, which towers twice as high as legal height limits outlined in the city’s Land Management Code, city planners openly embraced it publicly. In interviews on Park City’s radio station, KPCW, city eight stories high with a tower going to planners fell all over themselves praising 100 feet. It will dwarf everything else in town, where recently constructed four- the six to eight story dwarf its surroundings. story buildings seem much too high and stick out like a sore thumb. What is further surprising about the If you're looking for a barometer for a political fix, nothing signals one like public sugar-sweet praises from usually ski resort's project is the ease with which dour city planners. it sped process. Commission, through Park City’s planning Contrast the - ski resort’s Christopher Smart In turn, the which Park mass that City will Planning apparently takes it approval by the powers at city hall with that of the proposed Flagstaff develop- cues from on high, followed with the ment Lewis, Helen Alvarez and Bill Ligety proposed a modern facade for the Main Street Mall. Planning commissioners waxed philosophical about the 70-foot heights, as though the small town was in Daly Canyon. The developer of Flagstaff was dragged over hot coals for three years and was worked over by the city’s planning staff, planning commission and the most sympathetic review since Tina somehow a Greenwich Village bordering midtown Manhattan skyscrapers. The 35-foot height limit outlined in the Land Management Code - the legal document that defines development in Park City - seemed little more than a meaningless mirage, as the planning commission signed off on the monstrosity. There were so many congratulatory remarks that it seemed as though something akin to the cure for cancer had just been found. Of course, it’s true that the Park City Mountain Resort is the 2,000pound gorilla of the local economy. And that should count for something. The resort ought to be able to expand within legal limits. But the complete undoing of the development codes goes too far. The heights on the buildings are twice what they should be, twice as high as anyone else is allowed to build, and that just isn’t right. A closer look at the players may be informative: For example, the ski resort, the mayor and the municipality are so cozy they are all represented, from time to time, by the same attorney, Gordon Strachan. But that isn’t all. The Park City Mountain Resort and Jan Cumming have a lot of money. With it comes power. And that, in short, is why Park City officials are willing to junk the law to make the new development at the Park City ski resort Cumming wants it. @ as big as Ian |