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Show Editorial Plan Supported Main Street Needs You We support Planning Commission Chairman John Strand's proposal of a "Park City 'Redevelopment District," particularly phase I of the project which calls for the renovation ren-ovation and cleaning up of the Main Street business district dis-trict as well as creating certain incentives which will serve to encourage investors to develop the vacant lots on Main Street to their full potential. We feel that the traditional hub of Park City, the Main Street area, is the one aspect of Park City which sets it apart from other resort areas in the intermountain west. We further feel that the Main Street area has the potential of becoming the most important tourist attraction in Utah as well as becoming an area which all of Park City could be proud of an area of attractive well-maintained buildings housing offices and businesses which furnish the vital necessities nec-essities of the community as well as the convenient needs of the tourist. We feel that the greatest development potential in Park City lies right beneath our noses on Main Street an area that has seen a sorrowful pittance of the millions recently invested in Park City. Also it is our opinion that the Main Street business district an area which the populous should feel a kindred with, as being the seed from which the town they call home grew, has been the victim of a blatent lack of community pride. Buildings, even though occupied by businesses have fallen into disrepair, vacant lots have become a convenient receptacle for refuge of every known form . . . refuge which apparently is not confined to vacant lots and is just as common on the sidewalk or in the street. Another area of tragic neglect is Swede Alley. Because of the traffic pattern in ParkCity and the use the Swede Alley parking area will eventually support, the backs of the Main Street buildings will have almost as much exposure as their fronts. Like the vacant lots on Main Street the back lots on Swede Alley are also everyone's favorite garbage dump that with the depressing state of the back sides of most Main Street buildings serves to give the area an appearance paralleling "The Grapes of Wrath." Also Park City currently has the capability of supporting support-ing only a limited number of businesses. As more businesses open in areas north of town, particularly with the advant of Prospector Square, Main Street businessmen will find themselves heavily in competition with those bussiness-men bussiness-men north of town. If Main Street is not renovated, cleaned up, made more attractive and its business community built up via building incentives, Main Street may find itself in a few short years unable to compete and fall by the wayside as far as being an important center of commerce. We do not propose that the City bear the brunt of the redevelopment project nor do we propose individual citizens do so. But we do propose, and urge the City and local townspeople towns-people get together and work toward supporting the project and seeing it through to an acceptable end for all concerned. It is a matter of property owners taking more pride in the appearance of their Main Street establishments as well as everyone in Park City taking more pride in Main Street itself. Also it is a matter of the City fathers giving up a little revenuefby realigningtheir fee structure thus creating an incentive to build on Main Street), in lieu of many dollars in constant revenue over the following years. To us, realigning City fees to provide an incentive to build on Main Street is a simple matter of economics the City simply agrees to trade a few immediate dollars by reducing certain building fees for many dollars in the form of an expanded tax base created by the new buildings, com-, com-, ing in regularly each year. Again we urge people to support the 'Park City Redevelopment Re-development Project" and feel that its implementation is a matter of upmost urgency as well as holding the key to the ultimate success of the Main Street area as a viable center of commerce as well as foremost tourist attraction. |