The Park City Council has appointed an Old Town lawyer who has wide-ranging experience in both development and environmental work to the Planning Commission, selecting him over a diverse field wanting the seat.
Richard Luskin is an attorney for Black Diamond Equipment, a firm that manufactures outdoors goods, and is a former executive director of a Santa Monica, Calif., environmental group called Environment Now.
Luskin’s appointment is effective Nov. 1. He will replace Jack Thomas, a Planning Commissioner who is resigning in order to spend more time at his architectural firm.
The City Council selected Luskin over a diverse field of people who had submitted applications when other spots on the Planning Commission were being filled. The appointment is for a partial term ending in mid-2012, and the elected officials made the selection on a 4-0 vote with City Councilman Joe Kernan not in attendance. The City Councilors also voted to accept the resignation of Thomas.
In his application for the position, Luskin indicated the size of developments, which he refers to as density, open space and work force housing are of importance to the Planning Commission. The panel regularly must grapple with each of the topics. He said developments should not overwhelm the rest of Park City.
“While density itself is not intrinsically bad, it needs to be guided such that the character, which is the legacy of Park City, is not destroyed,” Luskin said in his application.
Meanwhile, Luskin said in the application work force housing, oftentimes called affordable housing, is a necessity in Park City. That sector of housing, he said, benefits the public and private sectors.
“To accommodate these needs as well as preserve the heterogeneity of Park City, affordable housing is necessary,” he said in the application.
He said there are “sound reasons” for the costs of work force housing to be paid by developers.
In a resume submitted to Mayor Dana Williams and the City Council as part of his Planning Commission application, Luskin said he was the founding executive director of Environment Now in the late 1980s until the middle of the 1990s. In that position, he organized a conference about the environment in the Sierra Nevada range, led a campaign to designate giant sequoia groves as national recreation areas. He was a figure in the formation of a group that protects the waters of the Santa Monica Bay and nearby waters in Southern California.
Luskin before that was a planner for the mountain resort in Kirkwood, Calif., and an administrator at Squaw Valley, another mountain resort.
He will join the Planning Commission as the panel continues its contentious discussions about the Sweeney family’s Treasure development proposal on the slopes of Park City Mountain Resort. The Planning Commission, meanwhile, is also preparing for discussions about City Hall’s General Plan, an overarching document that guides growth inside the city.
Over his partial term, there is a likelihood that the Planning Commission will also begin discussions about Deer Valley Resort’s ideas for a major development where the Snow Park Lodge parking lots now sit. Deer Valley holds rights to develop the parking lots dating from years ago, and there have been occasional indications from the resort that it might begin formal discussions with the Planning Commission.
Other decisions that the panel will likely make during his term include how the North of Main district is redeveloped and where work force housing is built. The Planning Commission also has a significant role in items like rewriting City Hall’s development rules.
Luskin is the second recent appointment to the Planning Commission, following Brooke Hontz’s selection late last summer.