Park City leaders Thursday created a program allowing some landowners to shift the development rights attached to their ground to another spot in the city, agreeing to a wildly altered version of a concept that had been under consideration at the beginning of the talks late last year.
The Park City Council vote was unanimous and involved a series of pieces of ground. Some of the parcels are known as ‘sending zones,’ or places where the development rights could be shifted away from, while others have been dubbed ‘receiving zones,’ or places where the rights could be shifted toward.
The sending zones approved by the City Council are:
The Treasure land has been the key sending zone. It had not been clear, though, how many of the development rights approved at the site in the 1980s but not yet built would be put into the sending zone.
City Hall staffers, the Planning Commission and the City Council were hesitant to include all of the Treasure development rights in the sending zone. There was concern about shifting too much development from Treasure to a receiving zone. Staffers earlier had wanted half of the Treasure rights put into the sending zone, but the Planning Commission stripped out all but the approximately 10 percent of the rights. The panel was worried the development rights at Treasure — 1 million square feet of residential units, commercial space and a convention center — were too great to be put elsewhere.
The decision to include only the approximately 10 percent of the Treasure rights will likely have wide-ranging implications for the ongoing talks between negotiating teams from City Hall and the Sweeney family centered on attempting to reach a conservation agreement for all or some of the Treasure acreage.
leaving 90 percent of the Treasure development rights intact, a conservation deal to protect all or some of the land will likely be far more expensive than if the Sweeney family was given the ability to shift more of the rights off the site and to a receiving zone.
The receiving zones approved on Thursday night are:
Of the receiving zones, the Bonanza Park district has been seen as the most important. A major landowner in the district holds ambitious plans to redevelop his holdings and has said he is interested in having development rights shifted toward his properties under the program.
Meanwhile, the City Council endorsed for the time being a one-to-one ratio for development rights being shifted from a sending zone to a receiving zone, meaning each unit shifted out of a sending zone is worth one unit in a receiving zone. The ratio, though, will be tinkered with later, once appraisals of the lands involved have been conducted and further analysis is undertaken.
It is expected that the Treasure development rights will be more valuable than the others in sending zones. Staffers had earlier contemplated a two-to-one ratio for any Treasure rights that are shifted but later recommended the ratio be 1.5-to-one.
Agreements to shift development rights from sending zones to receiving zones will be negotiated by the landowners. City Hall would certify the development rights involved in the deals.
Some of the landowners in the sending and receiving zones closely followed the talks, but there appeared to be little interest from regular Parkites. Discussion topics on Thursday included whether there would later be issues with the heights of the buildings in the receiving zones if additional development rights are shifted to them.
Programs like the one approved on Thursday are envisioned as ways a government can nudge development away from prized land and toward parcels they see as more appropriate for growth.