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Show Park City fakes a bow in Utah Holiday U ' CtY x-" Smiling Parkites Debbi and ''a )3 i0 Randy Fields air opinions on V 0 everything . from financial V"" wizardry and vision in politics to ep000 cookies and customers in this month's Utah Holiday profile. by David Hampshire She wanted to call it "A Renaissance Amid the Rene-Cades" Rene-Cades" but the title wouldn't fit. So it came out, "Park City's Tough Choices." It is the cover story in the March issue of Utah Holiday . magazine (due out Friday), and its author is Teri Gomes, a contributing writer and columnist for the Park Record. Actually, Park City is the subject of not one but three articles in the magazine's latest issue. Besides Teri's major opus, there is a nostalgic look at the disappearance of the beer bar from Main Street (which Teri also wrote). Then there is an interview with Debbi and Randy Fields entitled, "The Smart Cookie and .the Whiz Kid," written by the magazine's managing editor, Annette Sorensen Rogers. Teri estimates that it took her about a month to do the research, photography and writing for the "Tough Choices" article. In the process she interviewed between 20 and 25 people, in some cases returning for" a second interview when she wasn't satisfied with the results of the first, first. Of those people quoted in her story, only two Otto Carpenter and Jack Green could be considered consid-ered long-time residents. Most belong to the wave of immigrants that came after skiing started to develop in the mid-1960s. She says that selection was no accident. "The thrust of the story wasn't to talk about the town 25 years ago or 50 years ago. It was really to talk about the town in the last 10 years, after Alpine Meadows came in and broke up what was then a company town." . The "company" was'Sriginally United Park City Mines, which ran the last of the mining operations in Park City and, through its subsidiaries, developed develop-ed the Treasure Mountain ski resort (now the Park City Ski Area). United Park later sold the ski operation to the Royal Street Land Company, which in turn sold it to Alpine Meadows in 1975. The focus of her story, then, is the "piece of time" (one of Teri's favorite phrases) since that sale took place. "Suddenly there was an atmosphere for the entrepreneur to spread out and grow in Park City," City Councilman Bill Coleman tells Teri. "The majority of people who were the core of the old Royal Street Company stayed on in Park City and became successful business people in their own right. " The article details several success stories, including that of Coleman himself. He first came to town on his honeymoon in 1970, later got a job as a ski instructor, then teamed up with a friend to open Solid Muldoon's Saloon. "Karen (his wife) and I found a little house we wanted to buy in Old Town," he relates to Teri. "But it needed a lot of work so we offered the out-of-state owner $6,000 for the place. He came down and took one look at the old house and told us $4,000 would be enough." The Colemans later moved into a more modern home in Holiday Ranch. And the old place recently sold for $89,000. Bill now has his name attached to a real estate firn the Coleman Land Company. Teri says there is a common thread connecting the people in the article. "A lot of them make changes happen, and a lot of them have just been good observers." Her sources include Mayor Jack Green, Councilman Bob Wells, Father Pat Carley, City Manager Arlene Loble, Police Chief Frank Bell, and a range of business and community leaders including Nick Badami, Dean Berrett, Debby Symonds, Brian Schiller, Randy Fields and Dr. Robert Winn. Then there are those local residents who don't quite fit in any category: Jacquie Jackson, Betsy Bacon, Tom Brady... "I wanted to hit most of the areas of the community," she says. "That was a really concerted effort." The original manuscript submitted sub-mitted to Utah Holiday measured 27 typewritten pages. That was later edited down to 23 pages. Among the pieces that didn't make it into the final version was this revealing item: "Of all the people I interviewed, interview-ed, only one said he expected to grow old and retire here." The story gave her a chance to spend much more time with her sources that she could have done for the typical news story. And she came away with some opinions about Park City's people and its future. "1 have a sense of admiration for those people who stuck it out in the hard times," she sas. "I feel much stronger about Park City and its potential than I did... And I feel much stronger about the need to deal with the county about a strip of land between Kimball Junction and Park City. Encouraged by the editors at Utah Holiday to add her own conclusions to the story, she ends with these words: "The real issue of historic preservation doesn't lie in the handful of old buildings worth saving, but in the land. Soon enough those few buildings will all be spoken and cared for. But all the gourmet meals, fancy hotel rooms, and elegant fashions (to say nothing of land values) will be cheapened if open lands that presently border Park City become cluttered with new-age convenience businesses and high-density high-density buildings. Open vistas are as valuable to preserve as any brick, mortar, or clapboard. "Before it is too late, Park City needs to break out of its isolationist mentality and deal with the good old boys, all three of them, that serve as the county commission. To ignore the workings of the county govern- " ment while upgrading the city atmosphere is completely apart from being renegade. It is myopic." "If we were doing this for money we'd shut up. But we would also do things a whole bunch differently if we were doing it for money .. . "We wouldn't have done the (Egyptian) theatre, we wouldn't have done the (Main Street) mall, and on and on. So, yes, what we were looking for was psychic reward for doing it-not financial reward-we wanted to feel good personally about what we're doing. And since all we've gotten is kicks-no strokes-it removes all the fun, and when the fun goes, the party ends." -Randy Fields, in an interview with Annette Sorensen Rogers t . |