Today seems like a good time to talk about the wide world of newspaper ownership, with the Park City Planning Commission’s first opportunity Wednesday night to hear from the public and possibly vote on our owners’ plans to tear down the houses at 220 King Road and build another in their place.
This is no Dakota Pacific, Snow Park or Bonanza Park scale of saga, but it does embody the crux of every news organization’s challenge in covering its owners, prime funders, shareholders and the like.
I just came from a year in Aspen helping set a newsroom back on its feet after a settled defamation lawsuit that began with an editor letting a letter run with false assertions of fact that a former Soviet developer of prime land in Aspen was laundering money and was part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. The company didn’t allow the newsroom to cover the suit until after it was settled, giving the other daily in town free rein, and things only got worse from there. The journalists, management and owners all made big mistakes, simply put.
I made mistakes of my own, too. I also had fun and learned a lot.
I’ve worked mostly for families, usually in larger companies that operate in a “corporate” way, if by that we mean multiple papers, fiscal budgets, annual plans, sales goals, profit margins and chains of command that lead up to CEOs and advisory boards.
I’ve worked for one publicly traded company, and soon enough I may work at a nonprofit, right here.
The Park Record likewise has endured all manner of ownership structures over the years, from big publicly traded outfits to Andy and his brother, and Jan before that. No last names needed.
The community indictment of The Aspen Times is that it is part of a larger company, having been sold in 2022 from one out-of-town family to another a few months before their crisis. The other daily there is owned by a local resident. Among those who believe good and evil reside in where an owner lives, this passes as a sign of purity.
Here, of course, we can flip the script for critics of our local owners, Matthew and Tatiana Prince, primarily over their plans to build a big house on Treasure Hill overlooking Old Town.
I drove a general manager in Colorado batty by confronting The Aspen Times issues head on, recognizing plainly where everyone in that episode screwed up. It was the only path to exorcism left. I don’t recommend this as a career path, but I became somewhat notorious over the decades for pissing off my superiors. Kind of comes with jobs like these.
I knew coming here, if only vaguely, there was this house the Princes wanted to build that was controversial, something about the state Legislature, so on and so on. … I’d be making the editorial and coverage decisions about their personal quest if I came. Good luck.
So here now is the test, my Outback packed. The Planning Commission on Wednesday evening will take up the proposal. Never mind that plenty of homes in the city and some I can see across the way in Deer Valley from 220 King Road are larger than what the Princes are proposing. This is Old Town we’re talking about. That’s a big deal.
But if I’m surprised at anything about this, it’s the lack of criticism so far. I’ve had conversations about the house in my social interactions here, but not practically every conversation turning to my employers as in Aspen.
Maybe we’ll see more critics at the Valentine’s Day public hearing.
Speaking of criticism, though, some mild correctives to Michelle Deininger’s takedown in our Saturday edition of the Princes, me, The Park Record and the house proposal:
- There indeed are many instances of “non-compliance” with Old Town historic district codes, going by city planners’ reviews to date, to go with the proposed home’s height at least arguably compliant and lower than the “non-compliant” houses there now, along with a smaller building footprint than them, as well, if you exclude a request to not count a below-grade parking and fire-truck turnaround area in this envelope. The Princes and their team believe their application fits the Sweeney Master Planning District’s Treasure Hill Subdivision the property is in, along with five other big homes (similarly “non-compliant”), which they argue overrides and/or predates current Old Town historical district rules.
- Deininger suggests a groundswell of neighborhood opposition to the plans, quoting a resident by name and saying she canvassed other neighbors. We didn’t let her do anonymous quotes. Depending on how closely you draw this circle, half to nearly all the immediate neighbors, 13 households as of Feb. 9, had written to the city in support of the Princes’ plan, calling it an improvement. Six others, a couple of them close neighbors, wrote in opposition to the proposal, and three more said they were supportive with tight conditions.
- I’m sure Deininger was a very good news director at KPCW, but the station in her time and ever since has never canvassed neighborhoods to solicit opinions about developments they cover. That would include big ones like Dakota Pacific, Bonanza Park, Snow Park and small ones like the Princes’. Why? Well, they know concerned neighbors show up at public hearings, and that’s where every news organization quotes them. The first such opportunity with this plan is Wednesday, Feb. 14.
- Her biggest dismay seems reserved for us failing for the first time to load in year-old background about Matthew Prince going to the state Legislature and failing to override local control of his plans for the property. But even the vaunted KPCW doesn’t festoon every story about hearings on Dakota Pacific with the history of the Legislature’s involvement like a string of cans trailing behind. Seems she wanted an investigative tome in the place of a work session shortie on an inside page at which the Princes appeared for the first time to explain their plans in person to the Planning Commission and get feedback.
Maybe I’ll see Deininger at the Planning Commission’s first opportunity for public comment as well as to vote, which I’ll cover in the absence on Valentine’s of our regular writer on this story. If so, it will be her first appearance.
If not, she can read my reports, as well as this column, at the same time you and our owners do. And there’s always the other local outlets to yammer on about billionaires (!) and the Legislature (!) a year ago, just in case you and I had forgotten.
Don Rogers is the editor of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.