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Show Shopping Center Plans Analyzed by Pat Smith The shopping center question coming up at Wednesday nights council meeting is a question much bigger than whether or not to issue permission to build the enormous Holiday Village. It is a question of appropriateness in time and socio-economic impact on Park City's existing economic base and most importantly the concept of this kind of land use clearly allowable by Park City's Land Management Codes certainly challenges us to look at these codes and see who is managing the land. Highest and Best Use This '77-78 ski season crystal-izes crystal-izes Park City's socio economic future. With the closing of the last mine and the fabulous snowski season we've experienced, experi-enced, Park City takes its place firmly among the finest ski areas in the world. Since we are now dependent on the visitor dollar, our smartest move would be to accommodate the visitor's needs and make their stay as smooth and satisfying as possible. Money and time put toward accommodating accommodat-ing visitors pays off directly we the Park Avenue architecture, street plan and open space create a distinctive sense of place. When the road is widened and curbs and gutters are added, natural irrigation irriga-tion ceases to nourish roadside vegetation, trees die and traffic creates a barrier to pedestrians. There is a loss of sense of neighborhood. Temporary modifications to Park Avenue to accommodate traffic generated by the Holiday Village shoppng center seem wasteful and inalterably destructive destruct-ive to the character of the histoic Park Avenue historic district. Construction of such a shopping center should logically coincide with construction of the state highway. We should be concentrating concen-trating on removing traffic from Park Avenue, not increasing it. Traffic congestion in the area in question is already at intolerable levels more and more consistently. consistent-ly. The Holiday Inn will open and its commercial space will generate gener-ate more traffic. How can we approve another major traffic generator such as a vehicular oriented shopping enter in the midst of this entanglement? The Department of Transportation estimates the state highway is at least two years in the future. Why go ahead and intensify traffic problems with our supposed solution so far off? Economic Impact If Skaggs gets on the average of $15.00 per week from Park City residents, that's $15.00 per week that is not going to existing commercial enterprises. Park City's present commercial base is shared by many small business owners who directly experience the economic ups and downs of our community. In a bad season businessmen suffer and some are actually forced to close. If Skaggs or any other major chain were to experience a bad season in their Park City location, financial support from other operations would insure they'd make it. This kind of competition puts small business owners in worse and worse shape economically. Now suppose for a moment the powers that be fdecided to quit subsidizing this Skaggs store it closes for some reason and Park City is left to deal with the 46,000 square foot skeleton and six and a half acres of pavement as well as a deteriorated commercial economy econ-omy downtown. Existing services please turn to page 9-A enjoy them more and they enjoy Park City more, hence, they come back. In determining highest and best use of land around the intersection of the Holiday Inn and proposed Holiday Village, we get in touch with future planning problems that are not now covered in our Land Management Codes. This intersection at 224 and 248 is a major one as the natural entrance to town and the first thing you see upon arriving in Park City. By location it is a people center and third hub of activity; counter balancing the resort and the Main Street areas in Park City's unique triangular, 3 center community. To encourage pedestrian orientation orien-tation all over Park City, capital improvements planning must address public transportation needs first. Ski trains or trolleys are attractive, fun, and could utilize the existing rail beds. This method of moving skiers, shoppers shop-pers and Alpine sliders through town and back to their cars in outlying areas seems a natural for Park City. A rail terminal and visitor orientation center at this intersection, intersec-tion, with adjacent parking, would allow visitors to leave their car, seek information, maps, literature and rail passes to the other two centers. The existing U.P. Depot could once again come to life as a transportation center serving as Main Street terminus with a spur to Deer Valley eentually. Such a system would integrate services all over Park City and be mutually beneficial to all three centers. Land use permits from here on out should be carefully viewed with regard to future public transportation needs as highest priority. Land acquisition, building build-ing and road orientation and traffic circulation must be firmly dealt with if Park City is to reclaim its right to plan its own future and stop allowing private interests to make development decisions for us by default. Traffic The planned state highway is expected to handle increasing automobile traffic. Adequate directional di-rectional signage could easily separate traffic to the resort, to Heber, to Salt Lake. The state highway traffic to historic Main Street should exit into Swede Alley where appropriate signage would direct visitors to parking and pedestrian passage to Main Street. Park Avenue would no longer be the thru thoroughfare to town and would hopefully regain its residential nature when the state highway is built. Widening of existing roads is destructive to the sense of scale and character of established neighborhoods. The character of , n Police Chief Garth Wilkinson settles Into the department's new offices in the Memorial Building. PCPD moved into the more spacious surroundings Monday. more center ..... continued from Dane 2-A Valley development are closer to reality, population figures and consumer demand will clearly demonstrate a need for Holiday Village. By then the Main Street rehabilitation project may be far enough along to survive the competition of this kind of development. Given present road conditions and traffic congestion levels on Park Ave. now, construction of this project alone would negatively affect circulation circula-tion in this area for two years. Any decisions on public transportation, transpor-tation, automobile circulation and pedestrian orientation in capital improvements planning will directly di-rectly affect any property near the town's entrance. In light of this, property owners in that area might wish , to conform their developments to future public transportation routes. It is obvious obvi-ous by virtue of location, that great changes will be taking place around that intersection. The city shuld make every effort to formulate solutions to problems as basic as traffic circulation before giving the go ahead to traffic generating centers such as Holiday Village. will have to strain to keep local business from drifting toward convenience uying. Revitalization of the Main Street district is crucial if its shopping environment environ-ment is to be competitive with regional shopping centers or strip commercial development in fringe areas. Once again traffic congestion is the primary barrier to a pleasant shopping atmosphere atmos-phere downtown. Confused and lost visitors complicate circulation. circula-tion. Inadequate snow removal cramps parking and two way movement. Capital improvements planning should complement and support historic preservation goals. Strip commercial development drains business from a historic downtown down-town area and contributes substantially sub-stantially to its decline. Increased traffic will increase Main Street's inaccessability and increase vehicular ve-hicular oriented businesses. Is this what we want for Park City? An important part of Park City's Main Street preservation should be revised. Developers and architects on. the Holiday Village project have been extremely cooperative with the planning department in adapting the exterior of the 46,000 sq. ft. Skaggs to "fit in" to Park City. The fact remains that much of Main Street could fit inside this structure and this points to the question of scale: is this new construction compatible with the design characteristics, size, and bulk of existing buildings in Park City? No matter how yo decorate the outside, this building is easily twice as big as any in Park City. It is important that Park City wakes up in time to revise our Land Management codes to more accurately reflect our intentins for Park City's future. Consistent scale integrates inte-grates different districts in town and gives a feeling continuity. Our code should recommend appropriate scale. Perhaps when the state highway and Deer effort is the encourangement and protecton of the existing economic econom-ic base in the downtown area. By discouraging outlying areas in duplicating primary goods and services already available downtown, down-town, the economic life blood is kept in the downtown area. By most estimates, shopping centers the size of the proposed Holiday Village need an active consumer base of around 10,000 to 20,000 for support. Perhaps it would be wise to let our actual statistics get closer to that figure before we allow projects with this kind of economic impact to be built here. Scale Zoning laws that permit buildings build-ings the size of the 46,000 sq. ft. Skaggs in Park City, where no existing buildings exceed 20,000 square feet, clearly demonstrates weakness in the Land Management Manage-ment Code that does not specify compatible scale recommendations recommenda-tions for new construction. This |