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Show THE PARK RECORD WEDTHURSFRI, May 19-21, 2004 iewp oints. A-15 t EDITORIAL Hospital site seems a smart choice, but city must be cautious about annexation City Hall must cautiously consider what will likely be among the biggest annexation requests the government has received since the ultra-controversial Village at Empire Pass land was brought into Park City. The Park City government this week will look at what's known as a 'pre-annexation agreement' with a developer known as Burbs LLC. It appears that the firm will be dangling a new hospital hos-pital as a carrot. , . ; -r The developers say that the 160-acre property is a candidate for a new hospital that Intermountain Health Care wants to build in Summit County and that a number of associated businesses would accompany the new facility. Although this week's expected vote in favor of the agreement would be a minuscule step in the developers' attempt to annex the land, it will bring Burbs LLC into the government's standard annexation annex-ation process, which requires votes by the Planning Commission and the Park City Council. An annexation can certainly be one of Park City's testiest land-planning decisions, with the Village at Empire Pass, once known as Flagstaff Mountain Resort, the leading example of how an annexation can spur the emotions of Parkites. A separate landowner, meanwhile, just filed a $7 million mil-lion lawsuit against the city government alleging that the city did not allow an annexation to proceed. Still, admittedly without access to lots of the details of the Burbs proposal, there are some signs that the proposed annexation and development might be worthwhile for the community. With the population of Summit County hovering hover-ing at about 30,000 and many more people visiting the city each year, a hospital in the immediate Park City area is overdue and will essentially end the need to travel to Heber, where the closest hospital is, for medical care. Another compelling part of the proposal is the location. Quinn's Junction sits strategically in Summit County, not terribly far from North Summit, South Summit or from the western reaches reach-es of the Snyderville Basin, making it a smart spot for a hospital that will serve the entire county. It is also close to Summit County's mountain resorts, which means tourists could easily travel to the hospital hos-pital if needed. Plus, there is not much development at Quinn's Junction now, meaning that the proposal may not encounter the same virulent opposition from neighbors neigh-bors that now plagues the ward house that the Mormon Church wants to build in Trailside. The community, though, must still wait for the landowners to unveil their entire development request before anyone can endorse the Burbs proposal. k fev YOU GOT YOURSELF A NICE TcT : jL r MOCK-UP THERE LARRY. WVV A$L Y?rci UNFORTUNATELY I THINK THE A A II WENT WITH THE 1 JOHN KILBOURNPdftK RECORD LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Signage violation Editor: In order to commemorate the occasion of the 2002 Olympics, the city fathers allowed multiple non-conforming signs to be erected in various locations. One of the signs went up in front of my home on Empire Avenue with no notice to me or to any of the surrounding sur-rounding neighbors. For 18 years, I have had a pretty fair view of the mountains from several of my windows win-dows and this view was one reason I sited the house where I did. My complaints have been dismissed by the planners with the comment that Olympic heritage is important impor-tant and should be proudly announced to the general public The sign is probably the largest billboard ever to be allowed in the city limits and devotes only an area 12 inches by 12 inches, difficult to read, to the fact that the Olympics were held here. The rest of the sign promotes mountain biking,1 mountain1 sleds and celebrates the Resort's 40 years in business. It is my contention that the Planning , Department and the city have been deluded '" into thinking that Park City Mountain Resort is honoring the 2002 Olympics when, in fact, a billboard of extreme size has been erected to promote the facilities of the Resort.' I wish every reader would drive past 14th and Empire and see if they would like to have such a monstrosity erected to block their views. Dan Trimper Park City Thanks for support of LDS proposal Editor: As the bishop of the LDS Snyderville Ward, which includes the neighborhoods surrounding Trailside Drive and Silver Summit Parkway, I have been a keen observer observ-er of and part-time participant in the debate, both on this page and in the public forums, of our county government, relating to the proposal pro-posal to build a new LDS church. I am first and foremost very appreciative of the free society in which we live where freedoms of speech and religion, government by and for the people (both elected and appointed), and .priyateproperfy rights all come together, in,, the crucible of local democracy in action. The amount of public involvement on both sides of this issue has been remarkable and admirable, with the only possible drawback being that the exertion of this kind of energy has been focused on the proper location and design of a house of God. Imagine the good that could come if these same forces could be harnessed to solving some of the weightier matters facing our community. Alas, so much GUEST EDITORIAL Escaping Miami By KEN LEVINE So now that we've found the home of our dreams nestled in the hills of Pinebrook, we've had to head back to Miami to complete the transfer. Loose ends to tie up so that we can extricate ourselves our-selves from this vast, humid metropolis and become permanent Parkite wannabes. Things are going smoothly back in sunny Florida. The day after we hung up the "For Sale By Owner" sign on our townhouse a lady employed by the federal feder-al government, securing the homeland, came in and offered us our full asking price. So of course we snapped it up, then immediately began to ruminate about whether we had asked enough for the place. But "gift horse in the mouth" and all that. So a contract has been drawn and we are almost out of here. Which brings me to a dinner I had with my old cohorts from the Robbery Squad of the Miami-Dade Police Department, from where I recently retired. I relished hearing the current gossip, complaints, and general whining that cops are prone to, since none of it affected me any longer. I also relished ordering a Jack Daniels on the rocks, something the on-duty detectives detec-tives could only stare at wistfully, and having it come in a virtual tumbler by Utah standards. And as this was happy hour, they would soon bring me another for no extra charge. A drink truly worth it's price. My pal, Detective Laura Russell, was there, and as is her wont she began attacking attack-ing Utah as the "Pedophile State" basing her opinion on some news special about polygamists she saw on television. I once again tried to explain that I lived in Park City, where such things are highly frowned upon, even by the local Mormons, but she would not be deterred. So I told her that the big "polyg" community commu-nity was actually on the border, down in Arizona, a good eight-hour drive away. That didn't help much, so I asked her to compare the Eorida panhandle basically basi-cally Alabama light with Southwest Eighth Street in the Little Havana section of Miami as an aid in seeing how diverse a state can be from one end to the other, and that seemed to help a bit. Then I befuddled her, knowing her to be a "dyed-in-the-wool" Republican, by explaining that Utah was, for all practical purposes, a one-party, Republican state. This gave her pause, but not for long, once she decided she didn't like pedophiles even if they were fans of George W. Now granted, the pugnacious Detective Russell is not a skier, preferring to spend her vacations in front of a video poker machine in Las Vegas, but I have run into this type of Utah prejudice with disturbing disturb-ing frequency. I know my fellow Parkites can I call you that yet? Ok, I'll stop are aware of this phenomenon. Having announced my plans to move to Utah to my friends and peers over a year ago, I have been inundated with the issue ever since. In a tourist town, perception is certainly cer-tainly as important, if not more so, than reality, so there's the rub. You would be amazed how many people peo-ple think it's truly witty to ask me how many wives I plan to have, and where I plan to get my Jack Daniels. I, of course, don't know how one could handle a bunch of wives without the benefit of Jack Daniels, but that's a whole other topic. So I'm torn between , the realization that this prejudice might slow the ever-burgeoning ever-burgeoning congestion ; in Kimball Junction, and my desire to make a lucrative lucra-tive investment out of my rental condo in The Canyons. Having adopted Park City as my own, I defend her virtue, her beauty beau-ty and my own wisdom for making her our home. I would still like to see her annexed to Nevada, as I wrote in a letter to the Editor earlier this season, but that not being likely like-ly to happen, maybe we can find a way to get the "moral majority" off Main Street. Florida has a huge number of residents that climb into airplanes every year to take a ski trip somewhere. Their ski destination desti-nation is almost always Colorado. In fact, people I have known for years, after I tell them I've moved to Utah, still often ask me how things are in Colorado. They know I went somewhere to ski, and that's the only state they can come up with when they try to remember where I went. So I guess the moral of the story I tell is that the problem is even bigger than the folks in Park City realize. For many, we live in a parallel universe with a bunch of wives, and not a drop to drink. For me there is no place else I would rather live, as evidenced by my pulling up stakes in Miami and heading out there. I love her, and I guess I want others to love her too. As long as they don't try to build a house near Kimball Junction. for my idealism! I want to publicly thank the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission and staff, as well as The Park Record, for sticking to their best judgment and principles, in favorably recommending recom-mending the church's proposal. It was certainly cer-tainly not the popular thing to do, but their decisions were based upon professional planning plan-ning and the facts. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree and that is where those, in favor and opposed, have hopefully arrived. I respect those whose opinions differ from my own and especially their right to express them. My summary of the facts, which support this proposal, is: (1) the traffic impact has been studied, found to be minimal, and is primarily pri-marily on Silver Summit Parkway, a true collector col-lector road having almost no driveways fronting on it; (2) the church itself has been designed and sited to fit aesthetically well within its surroundings and to minimize any negative visual impacts; (3) the only variance needed is for the steeple, which is narrow and tapers to a point, has minimal impact on the 'ewshedi1 and" consistent with ..other churches in the community, (4) locating a church adjacent to the existing institutional uses (school, park and recreation offices) is appropriate, and (5) the need for the church is real and immediate. I encourage the . Summit County Commissioners and Board of Adjustment to likewise approve the church's proposal. However, regardless of the ultimate outcome, out-come, may those of us partisans on all sides of the issue come together to rebuild and strengthen the goodwill and relationships in this great community. Respectfully, Christopher F. Robinson Park City Environmental eyesore Editor: Where is the Sierra Club when you really need it? Drive south on S.R. 224 from 1-80 toward Park City. After you pass through Kimball Junction and all its eyesores, look to the mountainside on your right, and see the bigger big-ger eyesore. Of what do I speak? The gash in the side of the mountain next to the jumps at The Utah Winter Sports Park. It has sat there glaring at the highway since the Winter Olympics ended more than two years ago. What plans do they have to heal the mountain's great wound? Sincerely, George Sutton Park City Architectural observations Editor: All right, I love living here in Park City. Now let's cut to the chase. Architecturally, we stink. Let's not pile on the guy who owns the monstrosity at 330 Main. He's completely complete-ly redoing it (the inside! Some people just don't get it). Next, since I live nearby, I can tell you that nobody has yet set foot on the pink thing that crosses 1-80. Same for the lonely $1.25 million highway "rest area," which silently looks after the really neat sheep ranch nearby. Nobody does there either. But alas, maybe progress. I see a really real-ly big airport hanger exploding on the Swaner Preserve, which looks to be able to house the new 800-passenger Airbus super jet construction. Yeah, jobs! No?... it's, ah, a track? An indoor track? I checked with the trails department and ascertained we have about 34 gazillion trail miles of riding, running, run-ning, biking, horseback-riding, moonlight-carousing moonlight-carousing trails within a snowball's throw of anybody's $500,000 starter home. Oh, it's for the winter? We don't run here in winter, we ski here in the winter! Hello? If the club owner who contested a weight room there would have prevailed, the place would really be a tomb. And all the while Kamas kicks our butt in something we could really use: a state-of-the-art super indoor swimming pool. Who makes these decisions? : While on the subject of functionality, before we get to Park City, one comment on parking lot planning. Wendy's - you got a great Mandarin salad, but a person needs to use their housekeeper's 12-year-old rusted-out rusted-out Toyota to negotiate the drive-through. Ditto the dumbness of our new post office. We have trophy wives complaining on their cell phones, trying to maneuver their SUVs through a traffic jam in the parking lot! Twenty acres of land and we get a one-lane exit area built for a kid's go-cart or a Dan's Foods shopping basket. And now we hear 60 of our elected finest need to frolic in Vail and Aspen to get fresh perspectives on the plans for rejuvenating the $8,000,000 downtown project. I heard of similar sim-ilar ravishingly expensive travel junkets to . plan the, Olympic rejuvenation of a once- .pretty-cpo! place called Steeps? iirtn-dcrto usher in Park City as the gateway to the 21st century. Look what we got: Legacy Lodge -the single most unfriendly, ill-proportioned, ugliest piece of architectural trash (since, oh. 330 Main, or the pink overpass, or maybe the Airbus plant, etc.) extant in this town. I think the downtown project has tons of possibilities. But, please, whoever was supercharged super-charged with things like the Legacy Lodge leave them out of it. By the way, it's not pink, but do you know anybody who's ever actually actual-ly used our fabulously expensive and can't-live-without-it Transit Center? Can't wait for what these geniuses have in mine for Quinn's Junction! Slay tuned. Chuck Hayes Park Citv Teacher appreciation Editor: Last week we celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week at McPolin Elementary. I would like to thank our PTO for their daily outpouring of recognition and support for our teachers. Your efforts were greatly appreciated. On behalf of our teachers. I would also like to thank the local businesses that provided gift donations to show their appreciation for our teachers. We wish to express our sincer-est sincer-est gratitude for the donation of all of the fine gifts. The teachers were delighted!' Lori E. O'Connor Park City Elementary gratitude Dear Rotary Club: Thank you for the dictionaries. All the third graders love them, especially our class! We were so glad that second graders will get dictionaries next year and we know they will enjoy them, too. We have learned how to use them and it will be nice to have our own dictionaries at our own homes. Ian Weinman Bella Andreini and all the third graders at McPolin Elementary Golf tournament benefits Habitat Editor: On April 30, 2004, the National Honor Society of Park City High School held a golf tournament at the Homestead Golf Course in Midway. The money raised at the tournament tourna-ment was donated to Habitat for Humanity. The tournament was very successful, and we were able to raise about $2,700. We would like to thank all the local businesses busi-nesses for their generous donations and all those who participated in the tournament. Most of all, thanks to the Homestead for hosting this successful event! Sincerely, Caitlin Jolley The National Honor Society Park City Film fundraiser The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guidellnes:They must Include the address and telephone number of author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. They must not contain libelous material. Writers are limited to one letter every 28 days. Letters must not be longer than 350 words (guest editorials, 550 words) and should If possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters H they are too long or If they contain statements we consider unnecessarily offensive or obscene. In addition, thank you letters may be limited In length with regard to businesses and event sponsors. Editor: I want to thank The Park Record for your front-page coverage of the "Women of K2" film and thank those that attended this successful suc-cessful fundraiser for the Summit Land Conservancy, Park City Film Series and Mountain Trails Foundation! , What an opportunity to be able to talk to , the4ilmmaker-and.eameaman-afteKeach show. Thanks to the volunteers who made it happen - we live in such an incredible town! Sincerely, . Jennifer Guetschow Executive director Summit Land Conservancy The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER Editor Staff writers Contributing writers Editor's assistant Classified advertising Office manager Circulation manager Accounting manager Advertising director Advertising sales Editorial production Photographers Production director Production Distribution Cartoonist Andy Bernhard Nan Chalat-Noaker Jay Hamburger Pat Parkinson Monika Guendner Casey Basden Brett Larsen Joe Lair Jared Whitley Tom Clyde Teri Orr Jay Meehan Joan Jacobson Silvia Leavitt Linda Gorton Linda Jager Courtney Herzinger Inkarna Black Alice Hummons Parti Christensen Michael Duffy Kate Keesee Valerie Deming Wendy Halliday Anne Anderson Cathy Vandeweghe Molly Ballard Erin Donnelly ; Cheryn McNicol Wendy Mair Rena Jensen Teresa Chavez Kat James Scott Sine Grayson West Matt Gordon Kristi Ruppert Scott Schlenker Katie Perhai Jason Plawecki Kyle Burress Shannon Rogers Kaya Darko Carrie Winston Justin Deuel John Kilbourn Contents of the 77ie Park Record are copyright 2004, Diversified Suburban Newspapers. All rights reserved No portion may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the managing editor or publisher. ; Tlie Park Record (USPS 378-730) (ISSN 0745-9483) 0745-9483) is published twice weekly by Diversified Suburban Newspapers, 1670 Bonanza Dr., Park City, Utah. Periodicals Postage paid at Park City, Utah. .-. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Park Record, Box 3688, Park City, Utah 84060. Entered as second class matter; May 25, 1977 at the post office in Park City, Utah 84060, under the Act of March 3, 1897. Subscription rates are $37 inside Summit County, $70 outside Summit County, Utah. Subscriptions are transferrable; $5 cancellation fee. Phone (435) 649-9014 or fax (435) 649-4942. Published every Wednesday and Saturday. |