With the Summit County Council voting to keep the Specially Planned Area process intact for Eastern Summit County and recently placing a moratorium on the CORE process, developers and county planners alike seem to be struggling with how many buildings are allowed, when and why?
Under Specially Planned Area (SPA) guidelines, a developer can receive approvals for additional density if the project is deemed to hold community benefits. Redstone Towne Center and Newpark are two examples of SPA projects that have been built in the Basin.
Planners for the East Side, which has a separate development code, were hoping to overturn the SPA process due to confusion over what constitutes a good reason for more density, according to Summit County Planner Kimber Gabryszak.
“The SPA committee is trying to work on a new criterion that makes additional density less of a negotiation and more of a checklist,” said Summit County Principal Planner Adryan Slaght.
Under the Snyderville Basin’s version of SPA, the CORE plan, developers can increase their allowable densities to as much as 20 units per acre if they provide workforce housing.
However, CORE developments such as the Discovery project near Gorgoza are not allowed to have more than twice the density of neighborhoods within 1,000 feet. Confusion arose when questions were asked by the developers and county council such as what constitutes a neighborhood? Should an empty lot be included? What if the 1,000-foot line cuts a lot in half,-should that be included?
“There is no one good method for [establishing density using] CORE,” said Gabryszak. “We have gone through probably a dozen just for the Discovery project. What sounds like a simple process is difficult to quantify on paper.”
Under the current Snyderville Basin General Plan, most areas are zoned 1 unit per four acres, a substantial difference from the density of most existing neighborhoods. The Timberline subdivision is 1.86 units per acre and Southridge subdivision is 2.9 units per acre.
“We have methods like CORE and SPA in place in an attempt to provide opportunities for developments but that still meet the attempt of our General Plan,” said Gabryszak.
“The Discovery CORE project was a test case of a very complicated zoning process,” said Summit County Council Member Claudia McMullin. “If you do x, y, and z, you still don’t have the right to a certain outcome.”
No development to date has been built under the CORE method. County planners are unsure if this is due to flaws in the process or the economy.
Developers have recently shown frustration with the process. The Discovery developers were in planning talks for two years with the county before having their density determined. The proposed Silver Creek Village development, located near the I-80/U.S. 40 intersection, has been involved with the county planners for almost 15 years trying to get a project approved under the old Matrix method according to developer Eric Langvardt.