Driving in from the junction yesterday afternoon, I spotted two pair of Sandhill cranes in the wetlands, past the Catholic church and before the “Welcome to Park City” sign. They were elegant and unexpected. For years they have been arriving in the spring to nest and hatch their babies. It is always a gift to have a rare sighting of the giant, prehistoric-age creatures. The thing you weren’t looking for but are so grateful you witnessed.
As I continued into town, the construction vehicles who live from around the old Yarrow hotel up to the corner of Starbucks were just shutting down for the day. For three summers now they have returned, like the cranes, to pretty much the exact same spot, to resume a creation of their own: continuous sidewalks along the highway all the way into town. Wide, flat, landscaped sidewalk areas with plantings and rock outcroppings carefully, exactly, placed and spaced.
I understand there were safety concerns that led to the ongoing construction project and words like “connectivity” have been thrown out frequently in public meetings and press releases. There is, among some residents and clearly the powers that be in City Hall, a desire to be easily connect to as many aspects of the city as possible with clear, easy paths.
But a little piece of me dies when I see another section of wide sidewalk completed leading up to the now granite sidewalks on Main Street to the top of the street where yet another plaza is being proposed to host more events. The sidewalks stop temporarily at the end of blocks where inlaid faux bricks now guide the ill-informed exactly where they should cross the street. There are brick-paved mini-plazas, looking very much like those you would see in any number of cities, with prescribed flower boxes and brightly colored metal benches and carefully selected “art” installations. It is all very clean and neat and tidy.
And as I have watched this transformation over the last few years, a certain sadness has crept in that is different from nostalgia. Because while the marketing has told us for a very long time that Disneyland is “the happiest place on Earth,” we all know it isn’t a real place. It is a made-up park created for the amusement of guests. We know we are in the guest attracting and pleasing business now, mining those interests rather than the silver left in our mountains. Still, for decades, when people came to visit and came back to buy a home, they were struck with how very authentic the community and character of our town was.
Folks have always been drawn to our charm, which came from our quirkiness. Our unevenness. Our historically rebellious nature. It allowed the resident and visitor alike a chance to discover, on their own, all those delicious places and things that happen, like author Shel Silverstein taught us decades ago, “where the sidewalk ends.” The hiking trail not clearly marked, the ski run off in the trees, the end of the street where there is a space to just sit quietly and, on occasion, witness an off-leash moose meander down the street.
Because charm isn’t something you solve for. You can’t buy authentic. You have to be authentic. And right now, after years of prettying up the place, we seem to be tipping over to creating a place with endless ease, where the maximum number of people can come and recreate and move around en masse and get replaced with another group of people who arrive days later to do the same. Where the desire for discovery is dissolving and anticipation has been paved over with expectation.
Seasonal hanging flower baskets seem charming in the summer — built-in flower boxes seem especially contrived come winter. There are seasons and reasons to celebrate each. You can’t manufacture a community by creating a two dimensional backlot that just looks like a great place to live. It has to be a great place to live.
There are so many related discussions afoot right now where The City is cueing up to spend lots of money (some of it on affordable housing for a range of need groups which is key to our future and critical and should be applauded at every juncture). We need to show up and speak up about those expenditures. Do we want/need another plaza on Main Street? Will people honestly go there just to sit on a bench all those days and months where there is no event planned there? Or is there greater value to those places /spaces where the attraction is simply the view? Or the knowledge you have reached the end of road/sidewalk and you can either turnaround and go back the safe way you came or step off the edge and have that moment of excitement where you don’t know what is ahead?
In all our very careful planning, it appears we forgot to plan for discovery.
And while I understand a giant recreation conglomerate wants to protect its business/image by copyrighting our name, let’s not be confused — it is our name, not a brand. We have spent decades polishing that name and making it mean something genuine. If we lose our sense of self by becoming someone’s brand there will be no need to worry about a plaza or a flower box too many.
Take a stroll this week, off a paved path, and consider the parts of our Mountain Town that still are authentic and genuine. Leave yourself time to explore. Don’t have an end in mind to your drifting. Then come back focused and committed to protect and preserve that which makes us, us. If all the weekdays are busy perhaps you’ll make time this Sunday in the Park…
Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the director of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts.