Basketball players had just a few precious days to enjoy their return to the gymnasium at the Park City Municipal Athletic & Recreation Center.
The gymnasium, reopened with the rest of the facility in late December, will be closed down again on Wednesday morning to allow Sundance Film Festival crews to begin setting up a screening room. It will remain closed until a scheduled reopening on Feb. 1 at noon.
Ken Fisher, who manages City Hall’s recreation programs, said gymnasium use had started to pick up in recent days, with solid crowds of basketball players on Monday and last Friday.
“People have been, over the years, pretty understanding,” he said about the Sundance closure.
Fisher said City Hall brings in upward of $35,000 in rental fees from Sundance each year. The money is then put toward replacing equipment at the facility, he said.
The screening room in the gymnasium, labeled The MARC Theatre by Sundance, is the second largest of Sundance’s Park City-area movie venues. It seats 550 people, trailing only the 1,270 seats in the Eccles Center.
Sundance started some of the setup prior to the completion of the Municipal Athletic & Recreation Center in December.
Meanwhile, festival organizers also will occupy one of the indoor tennis courts court #4, which is the easternmost of the courts. Fisher said Sundance will put wait-list lines on the court. The wait-list line had previously been in a tent outside the building. The tennis court will be closed from 8 p.m. on Jan. 17 until 8 a.m. on Jan. 31.