Kenny Griswold has been waiting for this moment — the reopening Thursday of the old War Veterans Memorial Building on Main Street — for the past four years, maybe for all his life.
It’s not just the appearance of Nas, one of rap’s superstars. Not the string of the best of the best American chefs who will take star turns at Chef Dance Social, which will shift from Sundance festival wonder to open all year. Not the complete renovation of the concert hall upstairs and restaurant downstairs, the state-of-the art wall size screens, top sound system, replaced kitchen, care taken to comfortably fit 1,200 concert-goers …
Well, yes, all of that. But a final comeback from COVID, the love of his life’s remission from terminal cancer, all the blessings best recognized against the backdrop of tough times behind us. All of that, too.
Kenny Griswold knows he’s blessed, and he wants Park City to know the same.
UPS, DOWNS
He grew up in a Greenwich, Connecticut, mansion, son of the head of Clorox. As he spoke while giving a tour of the Marquis Park City, he called up an old photo on his iPhone of a white massif of a home big as a hotel, a hospital.
At 15 that all changed. The family was ruined. His father abandoned them. More photos, but different, darker. These are old photos of public housing. He pointed to a third floor corner of an apartment building, at a window. Their unit.
“It was hard,” he said. “I watched my mom just collapse.”
Just like that, privilege switched into poverty. Tough times. How did he cope? Well, he made a movie, and like all lads with dreams — can’t kill those — and some film, he left Connecticut for Hollywood.
You can look back and understand that odds work differently for some of us. But these are revealed in real time. Griswold had no sense in the moment of luck, only dreams for a movie without a manuscript and where you take it, from east to west, far as you can go.
He found more old photos on his phone. One at the White House. Wholesome movie star looks, blond, square jaw, open smile, a distinctive twinkle in the eye that endures into his 70s now.
“I worked on a TV show called ‘Happy Days’ as an actor,” he said, reminiscing. He played Rocky in an episode in which his character kidnapped Richie. He pointed out a picture of his girlfriend at the time, Olivia Newton-John.
Hollywood worked out. Maybe he wasn’t the biggest star, but he did find work in the business and became business partners with John Travolta. Here’s an industry in sync with chance, extremes each way, ups and downs.
In a sense, Griswold was reborn after arriving in Park City in 1984. The producer, actor and screenwriter’s mother had died that year, and friends who saw him struggling invited him out.
“It was just a magnificent place to start a different life,” he said.
By 1994, in part through a key connection to one of America’s wealthiest men, Daniel K. Ludwig, he and a partner, Michael Baker, were able to buy the Park West ski resort, which they renamed Wolf Mountain. In time, Griswold was able to purchase 104 parcels making up what became Canyons and lease it to American Ski Co. Plenty happened after that in the twisting path to becoming part of Park City Mountain under Vail Resorts.
But for Griswold, leasing the resort to American Ski Co. in 1997 was the crowning moment, his lifetime achievement. At the age of 50, he’d never have to work again.
So what now? Around this time he bought the old War Veterans Memorial Building, which became Harry O’s and Z Place and Park City Live, the largest indoor concert venue in town.
And he met a lady. Not just any lady. Perhaps in part to reach her heart, he and she set up the first of 19 years of dining experiences during the Sundance Festival in the basement of the building, hiring the very top chefs in America for the Sundance elite, basically.
Something must have worked. He married the love of his life, Mimi Kim, and today beams at mention of his three children. One, Skylar, 18, a year ago was the youngest person in 77 years to win a humanitarian award from the United Nations. Her fellow awardees were Dionne Warwick, Tshering Tobgay, Shepard Fairey, Dr. Peter Charles Howard Pritchard, Eric Goode, Jennifer Garner and Lady Gaga.
A first big blow came with COVID. No Sundance, no ChefDance. His venue’s tenant turned in the keys. No concerts, either. The business was done, the building empty. Years would pass.
Worst of all, Mimi came down with multiple myeloma cancer around then. Griswold’s voice broke while he tripped over this part during an otherwise lighthearted tour of the building.
“That’s my girl,” he squeaked. “So, yeah, I got really sad for quite a while, thinking I didn’t know how to take care of my kids. … They love me, but they are crazy about her.”
‘SOMETHING POSITIVE’
He said he dwelled on his wife’s diagnosis, writing blogs about what might happen, how he would cope with the worst, how he believed he would be unable to help with his children’s sadness.
Eventually, he realized he couldn’t go on this way.
“I said, I’m going to do something,” he remembered. “I’m going to spend money that we have saved to do something for a town that really gave me my life.”
And so the resurrection of the building began three years and some $10 million ago. Workers, by all appearances, took it down to the studs and rebuilt. The sound system, the screens, the kitchen, both floors of concert hall. Plans for 200 shows and a restaurant open year-round, not just for Sundance. A place for young people to get together, for reunions, special events. To experience true human gatherings. This would finally put COVID, at least as far as the venue was concerned, firmly into the past.
“So I said, if you can put together something that everybody wants to come in to, whether that’s a charity event, a New Year’s Eve event, a 50th birthday party …” and concerts. Lots of concerts.
As for Griswold and his family, “We’re going to put one foot in front of the other,” he said. “We find things that we like to do … and do those things.”
One of those, the restaurant downstairs, his wife is very excited about.
“That’s her project,” he said.
And her cancer? His eyes twinkled.
“She’s in full remission,” he said. She’d been accepted into a clinical trial for an experimental therapy about a year ago. It’s gone well. Those odds.
“Yeah, somebody gave us a new lease on life. I’m going to do as many good things as I can in my lifetime. I’m going to celebrate often,” he said. “In one week’s time, there will be so many many people waiting outside to get inside here.”
And so it begins, again.