Tony Gill

The controversial Hideout annexation of 350 acres near Richardson Flat has played out like a soap opera filmed on a moving rollercoaster over the course of 2020. Final say on the annexation will now fall to the residents of Hideout, who gathered enough signatures to force a referendum during a special election to be held on June 22, 2021. The Hideout Town Council voted 3-2 in October to approve the annexation, but developer Nate Brockbank and multiple councilors at the time supported letting voters have the final say with a referendum.

Tensions surrounding the potential annexation and planned mixed-use development on Summit County land have been high since the beginning of the process, when Hideout moved to unilaterally annex the land in Richardson Flat across county lines under the provisions of a short-lived law passed without public comment, H.B. 359. It didn’t help matters that Sen. Cullimore, who introduced the changes to H.B. 359 during a special legislative session, said the purpose of the changes had been misrepresented to him. Long story short, the whole thing reeked of impropriety, or at the very least a sneaky, special interest lobbying effort.

Park City and Summit County both lodged a series of lawsuits to block the annexation attempt, which was rescinded, altered and resurrected. There was hemming followed by hawing. Throw in a little harumphing on both sides, some accusations by opponents of the annexation and spirited defense by the annexation’s supporters, and ultimately the annexation was passed before H.B. 359’s repeal went into effect, but not without the provision for a possible voter referendum if enough signatures were gathered.

That brings us to now, where we once again are in limbo waiting to see what will happen to the land near Richardson Flat. If the annexation passes, the future holds substantial construction on the eastern edge of Summit county with a mountain of residential and commercial development. If it fails, the land will likely remain undeveloped for the foreseeable future. It’s all up to what residents of Hideout decide. Some agree the additional services are needed for the area’s growing population while others contend the underhanded process has derailed the possibility of mutually beneficial regional development and cooperation. You might as well flip a coin for a guess on how this will turn out.

At the very least we have six months to hear vociferous arguments from both sides, all of which will hopefully feature ample public input and civil, reasonable discussion. I realize that’s probably asking a lot from people in late-stage 2020. A vote, even if it’s not representative of all members of the public who will be impacted, is better than a unilateral decision-making process, so we’ve got that going for us. We will continue to update this story as things progress.

Read more of our community coverage here.

Maybe it’s because of their vaguely European aesthetic, like the gabled roofs on so many faux-Swiss ski chalets. Maybe it’s because the snow driving novices on vacation can’t be trusted to keep from skidding through busy intersections. Maybe the traffic planners around here are just really big NASCAR fans who fancy an endless counterclockwise flow. I don’t know what’s going on with all the traffic circles in Park City, but I know they’re everywhere.

Driving from the parking area at East Canyon to Kimball Junction to pick up some takeout in Kimball Junction, I drove through ten traffic circles. Yes, it could have been as few as three had I taken I-80, but this was back during some beautiful windows-down fall weather, so I turned up KPCW 91.7, cruised under the highway and along Kilby Road past the Skullcandy building. That’s a lot of traffic circles, a bounty that didn’t even include the crown jewel of the greater Park City area thoroughfares: the fabulous circle on Deer Valley Drive providing access to the Snow Park, Guardsman Pass and the Old Town transit center.

Let’s for a moment address the fact I realize a whole bunch of you call these loop-like intersection replacements roundabouts, and those of you from the Northeast inexplicably call them rotaries. Good for you. In Germany, they call them kreisverkehrs and Norwegians call them rundkjørings. Whatever quaint colloquialism you use to refer to traffic circles, I’d argue few, if any, mountain communities have tied their transit identities to eschewing the four-way stop quite like Park City.

The slew of traffic circles in PC has led to some spirited debate about their virtues—especially as the two new mammoth ones on either side of I-80 in Jeremy Ranch and Pinebrook took forever to finish—but we have a century of data showing where roundabouts shine. The Federal Highway Administration says traffic circles reduce the kind of dangerous head-on and right-angle collisions that cause serious injury and death by about 80 percent compared to traffic signal intersections. In a place where half the drivers distractedly gawk out the window at the mountains, that sounds pretty good.

Efficacy aside, Park City’s traffic circles give the town’s roadways an idiosyncratic identity that’s increasingly welcome in a world of homogenized resort communities. I think we can all appreciate a nice turn. This is a ski town after all. 

How Do I Drive Through These Roundabout Traffic Circle Rotaries? Traffic circles come in all shapes and sizes, but don’t be intimidated because the rules are simple. Slow down and yield to pedestrians and vehicles from the left before entering the circle. If there’s more than one lane, use the left lane for what would normally be a left turn, the right lane for what would be a right turn and either lane to continue along the same road.

See all of our Park City coverage here.

The theater marquees project confidence belying the empty spaces behind them. “We’ll be back,” they promise. I hope they’re right. The artworld is unduly burdened by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic; an unfortunate plight for trades sustained by gatherings of people. The timing for an extended artistic hiatus couldn’t be much worse for Park City as the community has invested in legitimizing its image as an artistic and cultural hub of the American West.

Officials in Park City long to diversify the town’s identity and economy beyond that of a traditional ski town reliant upon increasingly fickle winters amid a changing climate. The heart of the transformation is the Arts and Culture District, a five-acre parcel of land at the corner of Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard slated for studios, galleries and performing arts spaces. The district represents an enormous commitment to advancing arts and culture in Park City.

The town is shouldering upward of $70 million to develop the area along with partners Kimball Art Center and Sundance Institute, both of which plan to have headquarters there. The two organizations, however, have been hard hit during the pandemic, clouding their potential involvement. Each has been forced to lay off staff as their main fundraising events—the Kimball Arts Festival was canceled, and the Sundance Film Festival will be radically narrowed—have been disrupted. Both Kimball and Sundance remain committed, but the town is making backup plans should their involvement fall through.

The Arts and Culture District is vital to cultivating a creative community in Park City that isn’t ancillary and transient. For all its accolades, the Sundance Film Festival casts a long shadow. For two weeks the festival transforms the town into an international curiosity, but once the celebrities and corporate-sponsored pop-up clubs leave, the cultural maw is evident. The Park City Film Series and the Sundance Institute continue to screen independent films, but cinema fades into the background. The same can be said of the Kimball Arts Festival, which for three days brings vitality and diversity to Main Street. Despite consistently wonderful programming at the Kimball Arts Center, the festival’s end shifts Park City’s artistic emphasis to expensive galleries selling mountain scenes evoking a misplaced fetishization of manifest destiny.

Park City is bleeding culture. The Egyptian Theatre, a Main Street icon, indefinitely shuttered to conserve resources until they can safely put acts on stage again. Sundance in January will look little like the norm. Kimball Arts Center is still waiting for a permanent home. Low-interest rates alone can’t cultivate an art community in Park City. Without our local cultural curators, and arts and culture district will be devoid of both. 

See all of our Park City coverage here.

The plots are mostly native grasses with some Gambel oak sprinkled in. You’d be hard-pressed to describe the land as particularly notable, but as developable acreage diminishes in the Summit County, some see opportunity. Some see exploitation. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective, but the way each development was pursued—the “tech center” land west of 224 by Dakota Pacific and the Richardson Flat area by the municipality of Hideout—is so starkly different, it’s difficult to avoid picking a side.

Is the Hideout Annexation Attempt Legal?
Legal? Probably. Appropriate? Depends on who you ask. The bill, H.B. 359, allowed municipalities to add to their boundaries across county lines without approval from the impacted county, though the language allowing such action was later repealed. Brockbank and Hideout Council Members have been adamant everything was done above board. A lawsuit brought by Summit County alleges meetings were held in secret in a deliberate attempt to deceive lawmakers.

Development is a boogeyman along the Wasatch Front with seemingly every inch of available space consumed by infill. Wasatch Back residents fearing they too will be penned in by endless development have grown sensitive. Thus, the kneejerk reaction to any development news is a mixture of disdain and hysteria, some warranted, some misguided. 2020, being the waking nightmare it is, brought two opportunities for anti-development outrage beyond the multitude of ski resort-related projects already in the Park City pipeline, and we soon learned not all outrage is created equal.

“We’re not based in Summit County, so some people won’t like us anyway,” says Jeff Gochnour, Director of Development for Dakota Pacific (DP). “But despite the name we’re a Utah company, and the owner does live in Summit County.”

Gochnour is leading DP’s mixed-use development project across S.R. 224 from Kimball Junction. The development has been a long time coming. The Skullcandy building and visitor’s center were already built as part of a misguided plan to create a Park City Tech Center. Then DP purchased the languishing property in 2018. “There’s always pushback, especially from people who want the area to remain open space,” Gochnour says. “We understand that, but we’re respectful of the process and trying to design the project around public input about what Summit County residents want to see.”

To that end, DP is attempting to align the development with the county’s updated 2019 master plan. This includes items like building hundreds more affordable and workforce housing units than DP was obligated to provide in addition to addressing community requests for a dog park, a farmers market and a new outdoor concert and movie screening area to replace the open space and stage at Newpark, which was buried by condos and retail space. Development rights for the area were secured years ago, so there’s no recourse against the new building. County residents should be relieved the project is being managed by a party that respects community input.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of the development being sought by the municipality of Hideout, which has undertaken means so nefarious it borders on self-parody. They seek to create a Kimball Junction-sized development on ill-gotten lands unilaterally annexed across county lines after backroom dealings during a special legislative session in the State House that ultimately benefitted Mitt Romney’s son, Josh. Nothing contained in that grammatically incoherent string of clauses is a joke.

During a July legislative special session, Sen. Kirk Cullimore, R-Sandy, sponsored a bill with substitute language that legalized precisely the kind of annexation that Hideout, a town of 1,000 in Wasatch County, attempted to perform with land in Richardson Flat, part of Summit County. The language allowed Hideout to annex adjacent land across county lines with no county approval. After Hideout’s council approved the move, they entered a pre-annexation agreement for development rights with Josh Romney and his business partner Nate Brockbank, who had previously requested and were denied zoning changes allowing for a mixed-use development on the same land.

Summit County was understandably miffed at being stripped of land-use authority, and public outcry brought the issue to the forefront. “It’s unconscionable to me that Hideout would continue to attempt this,” Summit County Manager Tom Fisher told the Park Record. At that point, Sen. Cullimore attested the purpose of the altered bill had been misrepresented to him and joined the effort to repeal the language at the subsequent special session in August. Still, Hideout attempted to move forward with the annexation in the 60 days before the repeal became law and were blocked only by an injunction from 4th District Court Judge Jennifer Brown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only hastened Utah’s population growth, so don’t expect the endless tide of development to stop. Public pressure remains the most effective way to curb unseemly expansion, so let’s remember to use our limited stock of outrage wisely. Not all development is created equal. 

See all of our Park City coverage here.

Ski season is officially underway in Utah, but not without some hiccups for anxious locals. Heavy snowfall earlier in November had many dreaming of hopping directly into midwinter conditions with widespread terrain openings, but a dreaded high-pressure system has settled in with warm, dry temperatures. Between the dearth of snow and the complications of the coronavirus pandemic, some resorts have pushed back their opening days, while others like Park City Mountain are open with the equally-beloved-and-loathed white ribbons of death. The limited terrain has also impacted the much-discussed skier reservation system implemented by Vail Resorts (owner of Park City Mountain) for this season, making it difficult for some locals to access the mountain for early-season turns.

The skier reservation system was put in place to manage crowds and facilitate safe distancing on the hill. Love it or hate it, the system at least signaled a plan was in place to get, and hopefully keep, resorts open for the winter. As a little bonus for the locals, skier reservations for the early season until December 8, 2020 would only be available to pass holders, which many hoped would be a low-stress opportunity to work on the ski legs without fighting the crowds. But limited terrain has necessitated limiting the availability of skier reservations, leaving many pass holders out in the cold.

Several Park City residents I spoke with were among those unable to make reservations for opening weekend or the weekend following Thanksgiving, despite trying to sign up near the reservation system’s opening time. One of them, Mike Legendre, was able to secure a spot to make a few turns on the opening Friday after repeatedly refreshing the reservations page, but he was still blocked out of the coveted weekend spots. Currently, all but one day left in November are totally booked up, and the December 12-13 weekend is already full as well.

“I understand limiting reservations because you can’t spread people out right now, and I’m not for people hoarding days, or any resources for that matter. Going skiing is a privilege, after all, and we all have to make some concessions this year. But it’s still frustrating not being able to ski after purchasing a pass,” Legendre says. “I’ve only been able to reserve for opening day, and that was after sitting there most of the day refreshing the browser. There were overtones made prior to the season that reservations would be widely available, and that hasn’t been the case thus far.

A spokesperson for Park City Mountain, Jessica Miller, indicated in an email with the Park Record earlier this week reservations will likely become easier to secure once more terrain is open. Miller also urged skiers only to reserve days they are likely to use, warning if skiers repeatedly miss or cancel reservations they may lose reservation privileges for a period of time. This prospect has rankled some local skiers and snowboarders who feel the system favors vacationers with pre-planned dates over locals who rely on flexibility while balancing family and work schedules to ski. Spencer Steinbach, a hospital executive at the University of Utah and an avid skier is among those who feel the system works against their interests. “I try to plan afternoons to ski when I can, but what if I get stuck in COVID operations meetings and I have to cancel? I should be able to cancel without fear of being penalized and worrying I won’t be able to make a future reservation to ski with my kids. It’s ridiculous,” he says.

Reservations have been difficult to come by, but resorts don’t want people hoarding days when they’re available. Even if it makes sense, it’s fueling a sense of powder panic without the snow. COVID-19 won’t go unnoticed this ski season, but hopefully processes and policies evolve over the winter to let skiers to enjoy the mountain as they always have while enabling resorts to stay safely open and financially solvent. I was able to make it up for a few turns on opening day, and while layering a mask with a neck gaiter to ride chairs alone and ski a single run felt strange at times, I can attest to some fleeting moments of joy while arcing turns downhill. The moral, as always, is to go skiing when you can. It’s good for the soul, and we all need that right now.