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Show Surprise PUD plan approved despite grade of access road by Rick Brough The Park City Planning Commission, in a 2-1 vote, approved a conceptual master plan and density range approval for the Surprise Sur-prise planned unit development develop-ment (PUD). The Aug. 3 vote also recommended re-zoning re-zoning the property from Estate to Residential Open I I Space and Residential. II The opposing vote came from Commissioner Burnis ' Watts who argued the city was setting a bad precedent by approving a second access ac-cess to Surprise that is too steep. (Resident Tom Hurd also joined in, contending the second access, created maintenance and safety problems.) This access road, part of the Aerie development, runs , through a gully south of Masonic Hill and is called Aerie Drive. It is almost directly east of the Park Station Hotel. City consultant Eric DeHaan agreed the Aerie , road was not ideal, but had been allowed by the city to avoid an even worse safety . problem. The Surprise PUD would be located between the Sun-nyside Sun-nyside Subdivision (north of the Deer Valley entrance road) and the Aerie development (on Masonic Hill east of Park Avenue) . Commissioners Dean Berrett and Walt Bishop voted for the Surprise master plan. Commissioner Steve Deckert abstained because his firm, Alliance Engineering, was planning for the project. One access for Surprise is the Mellow Mountain Road, which begins at the Deer Valley Road, winding north and west through the hills. The second route is Aerie Drive. Hurd told commissioners he became concerned about the Aerie road after a conversation con-versation with City Engineer DeHaan, of the firm of Bush andGudgell. The Aerie road, Hurd said, would have a steep 14Vfe percent per-cent grade withint 125 feet of its intersection with the state's proposed belt route. (A city policy has sought to keep grades under 10 percent.) per-cent.) "My opinion is that people will be killed there," he said. Hurd said the road will also be difficult to plow. Therefore, the other road (running by Hurd's home) will bear the traffic burden for Aerie, and the 170-190 units proposed for the Surprise Sur-prise PUD. "It may very well be 14 to 15 percent grade," said Mike Vance, director of community com-munity development. But Planning Commission was not a party to its approval, he said. City Council allowed the Aerie development and roads as part of a lawsuit settlement with developer Elwood Nielsen. In that settlement, Nielsen obtained concessions to construct con-struct a development on the Masonic Hill area. In return, the city obtained land, owned by Nielsen, needed to construct the state's proposed belt route. In this agreement, the city was acting to avoid a safety problem, said DeHaan. Without the belt route, said DeHaan, the city would face a hazardous traffic situation on Park Avenue. He acknowledged that a portion of Aerie Drive through the gully has over a 14 percent grade. "It's steeper than any design engineer would prefer." The city, he said, should take care to plow and sand, and to post a slow speed limit for the road. In difficult winter conditions, con-ditions, plows may have tc take the (Mellow Mountain) south access road to cleat Aerie. "To say it's impassable im-passable is a little farfetched," far-fetched," he added. Planning Chairman Cal Cowher also noted that the south access road to Deer Valley has grades over 15 percent, and yet is passable. In a related topic, Hurd complained about two switchbacks switch-backs planned for the south access road to Surprise. Sur-prise. "You'll need 30-foot grades," he said. "That mountain will disappear." Site disturbance will be bad, said DeHaan, but the Surprise project has plans to revegetate. Vance said both accesses, when constructed, will be maintained and plowed by the city, which will then have a Dublic right-of-way over the roads. In the future, he said, it is possible Aerie residents would ask that Aerie Drive be classified as an emergency access. In that case, it would be their responsibility to maintain the road. The proposed surprise master plan, said Senior Planner John Eskelin, consists con-sists of 79 acres, including 31 classified as ROS. The occupied oc-cupied area would be subdivided sub-divided into 18 parcels, with specific density ranges for each. Each site would have to receive conditional use approval before it is built. |