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Show A-2 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, November 14-17, 2020 The Park Record 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. Same-day redelivery is possible if you call during the following hours: * Weekdays: 6:30–8 a.m. * Saturday: 7–8 a.m. * Sunday: 7–10:30 a.m. To request a vacation hold or change of address, please call 435–649–9014 or email: circulation@parkrecord.com THE NEWSROOM To contact the newsroom, please call 435–649–9014 or email editor@parkrecord.com For display advertising, please call a sales representative at 435–649– 9014 or email val@parkrecord.com To place a classified ad, please call 435–649–9014 or email classads@parkrecord.com For questions about your bill, please call 435–649–9014 or email accounts@parkrecord.com New union forms look like, have never talked to them.” Webb said a hybrid model comes with challenges for families with working parents, and district officials have said that having students out in the community unsupervised might lead to higher rates of COVID transmission. McKay said that hundreds of high school students are already at least partially receiving their education outside of the school building. She added that the hybrid model AFT is seeking would apply only to the high school, where students are old enough not to require child care. AFT is also pushing for more time for teachers to support online learners and for increased transparency in how COVID cases are reported at schools. The union alleges the high school had more than 15 active COVID cases at once, which is above the state guideline for when schools should move to remote learning. Superintendent Jill Gildea did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but has said in the past the district evaluates all available data to weigh the risks and benefits of remaining open for in-person learning. She has said the 15-case threshold is a guideline that needs to be reviewed with local and state health officials, taking into context the local environment. Teachers have been concerned with the district’s COVID protocols since before schools opened in the fall, though the significant case spike in schools they feared has largely not materialized. The Park City Board of Education has said the majority of teachers in the district support the reopening plans. Webb said that the new Park City chapter of AFT formed after some teachers demanded work actions like Continued from A-1 The Park Record online is available at www.parkrecord.com and contains all of the news and feature stories in the latest edition plus breaking news updates. The Record’s website also hosts interactive entertainment, restaurant and lodging listings and multimedia features. Real estate surges Contents of The Park Record are Copyrighted 2015, Wasatch Mountain News Media Co. All rights reserved. No portion may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the managing editor or publisher. navirus pandemic worsens. While Winstead could not have anticipated the extent of the real estate boom, he’s not shocked that the market has proven resilient during an economic slump. He said the same was true during the Great Recession, though the market did not escape that crisis unscathed. “We haven’t had a lot of downturn in our market,” he said. “Even 2008, 2009, 2010, I don’t think we fell below 25%, 30%, where other states were going down to 50%, 60% and 70% below what the real estate market value was.” Many Park City residents are unlikely to find the strong third-quarter numbers surprising. Parkites noted how busy the town seemed to be over the summer, from packed trails to crowded grocery stores, even as COVID kept many out-of-state visitors away. The Park Record (USPS 378-730) (ISSN 0745-9483) is published twice weekly by Wasatch Mountain News Media Co., 1670 Bonanza Drive, Park City, UT 84060. Periodicals postage paid at Salt Lake City, Utah, 84199-9655 and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Park Record, P.O. Box 3688, Park City, UT84060. 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: $56 within Summit county, $80 outside of Summit County, Utah. Subscriptions are transferable: $5 cancellation fee. Phone: 435–649–9014 Fax: 435–649–4942 Email: circulation@parkrecord.com Published every Wednesday and Saturday a strike that weren’t supported by members of PCEA. AFT members dispute that, saying they didn’t demand a work action, but that they wanted to keep that as an option. A statewide group of teachers organized such a work action on Thursday. The so-called “test out” called on teachers to use a sick day to seek a COVID-19 test as a means of drawing attention to the importance of securing increased safety measures. It is unclear how many teachers participated in the action in Park City, with multiple officials declining to respond to requests for teacher absentee numbers. Webb estimated that a handful of teachers participated, while an AFT representative put the number at “a few.” It was unclear whether the district would seek disciplinary action against the teachers who participated. The future for the fledgling union is also unclear. Its members indicated that they wanted a seat at the table to discuss COVID protocols with district officials, but Webb said that was unlikely. He added that he would listen to input from all of his colleagues regardless of whether they are members of PCEA. PCEA negotiated a compensation package this year that included $2.4 million in total compensation increases over four years. AFT members said they had no issues with the compensation negotiations. The district is compelled to collectively bargain with an association that represents more than 50% of the labor group, which PCEA does. There is no guarantee AFT will be invited to participate in future negotiations. Megan McKenna, a high school science teacher and AFT member, said there’s a common misperception that AFT wants to shut down schools. She said the opposite is true: that by pursuing a hybrid style of learning, schools will be able to meet in-person for longer. “This is not something we wanted to do or have time to do,” McKenna said of the effort to organize a new union. “This is something we need to do.” But the question now is whether the people who’ve bought homes here during the COVID crisis plan to live in Park City permanently or retreat back to urban areas when the pandemic is over. Winstead, for one, has heard from many Realtors whose clients say they want to make the Park City area their permanent home. “It’s hard to leave Park City once you’ve been here,” he said. “Every time I think about going on a vacation, I’m like, ‘Well, where’s a better place to go than Park City?’” The activity since the pandemic began has not been confined to Park City proper or the Snyderville Basin, though those areas were busy in the third quarter. Midway, Heber City and the area around the Jordanelle in Wasatch County saw large increases in sales, while there was also a flurry of activity in the Kamas Valley. The challenge facing the area now, Winstead said, will be building amenities, from commercial hubs to trail systems to affordable housing, in the outlying areas to relieve the pressure on the already-stressed infrastructure in Park City. “It’s an influx of people and it’s going to put a bit of a strain on our infrastructure until we can do something to broaden that to the outlying areas,” he said. Lawsuit: County aimed to squash competition Officials had ulterior motives for annexation fight, developer claims ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record In the ongoing legal battle to decide the future of Richardson Flat, developers filed a counterclaim last month that accuses Summit County of suppressing their proposals because officials didn’t want competition for a development the county wants to build 3 miles up the road. “Summit County is and at all times relevant was a de facto real estate developer competing in the market with other real estate developers,” the counterclaim states. It goes on to allege that the county is planning a giant development near Home Depot, just north of Hideout on U.S. 40, and acted to crush potential competition. The county denies the allegations. The claim was filed by attorneys representing an LLC controlled by Nate Brockbank, the developer who is seeking to build a large mixed-use project on 350 acres of Richardson Flat that Hideout recently annexed into its boundaries. The lawsuit and counterclaim center on parcels just west of the land Hideout annexed that include the Richardson Flat park-and-ride lot and areas to the south. That land was included in an annexation proposal earlier this year but withdrawn after Park City indicated it would join the legal fight to stop it. In the county’s lawsuit that spurred the counterclaim, Summit County secured a preliminary injunction to prevent Brockbank and other entities from developing the land or consenting to its annexation. The counterclaim seeks punitive damages for reasons including the lost profit that would be gained from developing that land. It accuses the county of unlawfully monopolizing the development market for its own gain by withholding permits and approvals, suing to stop the annexation and pressuring the state Legislature to repeal the law allowing the annexation. The county has filed to dismiss the counterclaim, saying governmental bodies are immune from such claims. Summit County Manager Tom Fisher denied that the county is in the real estate development business. “The county has never done any type of development that would compete with private developers,” Fisher said in an interview after the county’s response was filed late last month. Summit County owns about 125 acres across from Home Depot known as the Gillmor parcel. Officials are planning to develop a portion of it, though only brief public discussions have occurred about how the land should be used. Fisher said the county would have to follow the same steps as any other developer seeking to build in Summit County, starting with applying to rezone the land. No such steps have been taken, he and other officials have said. Summit County’s budgets since at least 2018 have included money for land-use planning for land it owns. Determining how to “program” the Gillmor parcel has been discussed as a County Council priority each of the last two years, though no conclusions have been made. Fisher indicated that process would include discussion at the County Council level, as well as hiring con- sultants to perform planning work. Officials have contemplated using county land for strategic priorities like additional affordable housing or a public works facility. Elected officials have discussed in public meetings using the county’s land and its borrowing power to build an affordable housing project. But instead of a future bus barn or library, the counterclaim contends that the county wants to build a massive mixed-use development on the land, totaling some 1.2 million square feet of commercial and residential space and 1,500 residential units. Fisher denied that the county wants to build anything of that size. Documents obtained by The Park Record show a sizable project has at least been contemplated by county officials. Fisher said those concept maps were created in the early stages of a planning process to show the scale of development it could support. “We wanted to understand, in conjunction with a neighboring property owner that is planning to develop his property commercially, to understand what the road system was going to need or if there was close to the kind of capacity necessary,” Fisher said of the purpose of commissioning the concept maps. In 2018, private developers submitted plans to build a mixed-use project across from Home Depot on parcels neighboring the county-owned land. Marketplace Commons, as the project was called, included 178 residential units and 98,000 square feet of potential restaurant, retail, office and live/work space. It was to be anchored by a 62,000-square-foot grocery store, which is roughly the size of the Smith’s Marketplace in Kimball Junction. The concept maps prepared for Summit County show a mixed-use project stretching across both that land and the adjacent county-owned Gillmor parcel. The large-scale grocery store that was to anchor the private project is located on county-owned land on those maps, and not on the land owned by private developers. That seems to suggest that Summit County officials have at least contemplated the concept of allowing county-owned land to be developed along with the neighboring parcel. The maps were created by a consultant working for the adjoining landowner, and Fisher said the county partly financed the work. Fisher denied that any serious planning has been done, calling the work extremely preliminary. “It’s basically taking a list of needs that the county, whether it’s a strategic need around affordable housing or it’s a strategic need around senior amenities ... (and) trying to understand whether the land can handle that or not,” Fisher said. “But knowing that there was an adjacent landowner that was also developing at the same time, it made sense to us as an adjacent landowner to talk to him about it.” According to a preliminary schedule, a trial to evaluate the county’s lawsuit and the developer’s counterclaim could begin next fall. Fisher indicated that the County Council’s decision whether to issue a bond and borrow money for building projects will likely determine how and when land including the Gillmor parcel is used. The council has discussed the issue and if it goes forward, Fisher said applications to rezone the land are at least a year away. 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 Extraordinary is our ordinary. All in, for you. 3092 So. Highland Dr., Salt Lake City (801)484-6364 888.445.RUGS (7847) Mon.-Sat. 10 am to 6 pm |