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Show A-2 The Park Record Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, December 14-17, 2019 Continued from A-1 The Park Record. Serving Summit County since 1880 The Park Record, Park City’s No. 1 source for local news, opinion and advertising, is available for home delivery in Summit, Wasatch, Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties. Single copies are also available at 116 locations throughout Park City, Heber City, Summit County and Salt Lake City. SUBSCRIPTION RATES In Summit County (home delivery): $56 per year (includes Sunday editions of The Salt Lake Tribune) Outside Summit County (home delivery available in Wasatch, Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Utah counties; all other addresses will be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service): $80 per year To subscribe please call 435–649– 9014 or visit www.parkrecord.com and click the Subscribe link in the Reader Tools section of the toolbar at the bottom of the page. To report a missing paper, please call 801–204–6100. 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Phone: 435–649–9014 Fax: 435–649–4942 Email: circulation@parkrecord.com Published every Wednesday and Saturday Farm at crossroads Brown said is looking to create a futuristic agritourism destination where schoolchildren and tourists can come out and see cows giving birth and being milked in a clean environment with the human element nearly removed. That sort of innovation, while it may not fit with an image of the farming days of yore, is something the Browns and many farmers have had to do to meet the challenges of the day. Brown’s father, Glenn, recalls earlier days in Summit County when “everyone milked a cow.” Now, those numbers have dwindled, and the Browns are one of the last large dairy farms left. Mike Brown said his farm is at an economic disadvantage having to freight everything in and out, and that he’s competing against larger farms whose buying power gives them economies of scale that he can’t match. He could break even for a while, he said, but the farm is at the mercy of outside forces like commodities markets and feed prices, and he is reluctant to make the necessary investments in his land just to keep the status quo going. Brown estimates it will cost a few million dollars to make his agritourism vision a reality, and there are plenty of challenges in the way, both in developing a local market that will buy the specialty products and in generating enough capital to make it happen. Some of his neighbors may also have a say in whether his idea comes to fruition. It relies in part on the success of a novel land-planning committee that is working to design a new town near Hoytsville. The Cedar Crest Village Overlay Committee is made up of local landowners and is attempting to come up with the best way to use about 1,000 acres of land. Mike Brown is on the committee and his 300 acres are included in the project area. Committee members are creating a plan that, if adopted, could guide development in the area. They are weighing things like where the town’s main street and commercial core should go, which areas should be parks and open spaces and where to put residential areas. Brown envisions selling off much of his land and providing an agritourism element for the village. He hopes the town will provide the market for his products in the people who will live there, the incentive to Continued from A-1 Plan shows possibilities headquarters west of S.R. 224, provides the perfect location for a transit center. “This is an important idea; I don’t know where else you can do it,” he said. “We’re pretty excited this makes sense at this location.” Planning commissioners indicated their support of the general idea, especially with the need to do something about the failing intersections near Kimball Junction, but expressed skepticism about how it would get done. Commissioner Canice Harte pointed Direct Importer of the World’s Finest Rugs A t t h e H i s t o r i c Vi l l a T h e a t r e 3092 So. Highland Dr., Salt Lake City (801)484-6364 888.445.RUGS (7847) Mon.-Sat. 10 am to 6 pm TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD This store operated for years on the Brown’s dairy farm and Mike Brown hopes to bring it back. He says his farm was always known for its whipping cream and skim milk, but he’s thinking about branching out to manufacture locally sourced specialty products like cheeses and ice cream. He hopes zoning changes related to the design of a new village will bring both the capital necessary for reinvestment and a larger local market for his goods. Farm oF the Future? One part of Mike Brown’s vision for the future of his dairy farm is already in place, though it may need some new paint. The Summit Valley Milk sign still hangs at the Brown family farm on Brown’s Lane near Hoytsville. For many years, the small store was open a few hours each afternoon and sold farmfresh milk and other items to customers from the East Side and elsewhere who wanted locally sourced products. Brown envisions opening the shop once again, but this time adding items like specialty cheeses and ice cream for tourists or families who may have stopped by to see how milk is made or to get a tour of the dairy operation. It’s part of a plan to radically change the 60-year-old dairy operation into a modern agritourism destination that is 100% automated and virtually removes the human element from farming. Brown said it’s necessary to make it in today’s economic landscape. “If I’m going to stay, it has to change,” he said of his farm’s business model. “It’s not sustainable.” His operation currently milks about 280 cows twice a day with the cows living in open-air enclosures. His vision calls for downsizing the number of cows, building a new barn to contain the entire operation and investing in robotic milking stations that cows can access on their own, choosing when and how often. Having everything inside and out of the elements cuts down dramatically on the environmental impact of manure because it doesn’t get washed away by precipitation, Brown said, and there are automated devices that could clean the enclosure. The self-contained operation makes it perfect for attracting tourists, Brown said. Everything from birthing to milking could be on display. Brown said the farm recently went from three milkings per day to two, cutting down on production. He said he made the move because he couldn’t find labor. When cows milk themselves, they average about three-and-a-half times per day, he said. The machines read the cow’s tag and then uses the information it has saved about each individual cow to locate the teats, clean them and start milking. The milk is tested for many qualities, Brown said, and the machine is able to separate the cows that are in heat or those that might be ill into a separate pen. He said he’d be able to run the operation with one other employee, cutting down on labor costs. Brown worries that as family farms disappear people are losing touch with agriculture and animals. He envisions a learning center where schoolchildren could come face to face with animals, a prospect he said is becoming more rare. The challenging landscape of the dairy industry has hit Summit County’s farmers, and Brown said he’s the last major holdout. “Once I’m gone, that’s it,” he said. “This has the potential to save ag (in Summit County).” put in a new exit from Interstate 80 to enable easy access for tourists and the capital he needs by allowing him to sell his farm or subdivide and sell off parts of it. Brown, as is common in farming, borrows against the equity in his farm to make large up-front purchases for things like animal feed, but is restricted in how much money he can make by selling his land, as current zoning designations limit how many housing units can be put on it. Those limits could change if the village overlay process continues to proceed. “The only way I’d be willing to reinvest is if there’s development, growth, if there’s a demographic shift,” Brown said. “People who are here now could care less how I milk my cows. The new generation are enthralled by it.” He says that farming as a profession is becoming a harder sell as the economic benefits shrink and some of his peers are forced to have another fulltime career to make ends meet. “The next generation isn’t willing to drive to Salt Lake for a day job to subsidize the farm,” he said. “I believe we’re a half-generation away from losing touch with agriculture.” Standing in what used to be the farm’s store, Glenn Brown nods his head in the direction of the dairy operation. “That barn has never missed a milking since 1961,” he said. If his son has his way, that run might come to an end sooner than later, ushering in one more innovation for the Brown family and a different kind of dairy farming for Summit County. out that, according to the general plan, any approval of increased density in the Snyderville Basin requires an offsetting “countervailing public interest.” While it appears these transportation amenities would be aimed at benefiting the public, the developer has been open in saying it wouldn’t finance them on its own. “I don’t know where in this process we get to the real plan,” Harte said. The vision outlined by the developers would have underground ramps coming from S.R. 224 for bus traffic to enter the transit center, which would be dug into the hill near where the county’s Sheldon Richins Building currently sits. That would catalyze a bus rapid transit system that has long been contemplated by regional officials. A 2018 study envisions one node of that system at Kimball Junction and another at Park City’s planned arts and culture district in Bonanza Park. The new transit center could also be the site of an underground park-and-ride facility. Responding to a question form Harte about what the developers would be able to get done on their own, Dakota Pacific president of development services Jeff Gochnour said they would follow through on their obligation to pay for the number of parking spaces required by the code for their proposed office buildings. In the aspirational presentation, though, that parking obligation could be integrated into the much larger transit center, envisioned as extending three stories underground. That would in essence leverage the developers’ cash to help finance a larger project. Without matching funding from other stakeholders, Gochnour said the developers would likely build a more conventional, smaller parking structure. And the consensus between the elected officials and developers seemed to be that retrofitting such a structure at some point in the future to fit larger transit goals would be highly unlikely. The site is currently entitled for about 1.3 million square feet of development limited to certain uses centered around the tech industry. The Olympic View developers are asking to renegotiate a 2008 development agreement to allow 2 million square feet of development, 1,135 residential units, commercial space, retail, offices and possibly hotels. They estimate about 2,500 full-time residents would live there and have said the residential component would be rental units, addressing a dire need in the county. Furthermore, the developers have an extensive history in affordable housing developments in the Salt Lake Valley, another aspect county officials are expected to push for. Charlier said that the group wanted to show planning commissioners what was possible, and that with Utah possibly bidding for another Olympics, having a plan in place for potential federal funding could prove key. — Alexander Cramer |