The Park City Appeal Panel on Tuesday night denied the appeal of the Planning Commission’s approval of Matthew and Tatiana Prince’s proposal to build a new home overlooking Old Town, and sent back a decision allowing a corner of the property to be built into a possible sensitive lands zone for further study.
The panel voted 2-1 to remand the part of the Planning Commission’s approval concerning the sensitive lands, while all agreed that the commission followed the correct procedures on the other elements of their decision.
It took a while to get there, however — nearly six and a half hours, including presentations, 16 public comments mixed between supporting and opposing the home, and nearly a half hour in the end huddling privately with their counsel before voting.
Appeal Panel Chairman Adam Strachan, who served on the Planning Commission for nearly 10 years about a decade ago, also expressed concern after the vote about settling property matters such as height limits through evolving plat notes, but he also recognized the City Council had adjusted the height limit for homes in the Sweeney Master Planning District to 30 feet in the mid-1990s this way before the Planning Commission became the determining body for such property matters.
But otherwise the Appeal Panel agreed with the Planning Department and the applicant team that the Planning Commission had done its work correctly.
Matthew Day voted with Strachan to send the steep slopes issue back to the Planning Commission, citing an abundance of caution. Esteban Nunez said that ambiguity is supposed to favor the applicant by rule and voted against that.
The panel sidestepped a motion to deny standing to supporters who had signed on to the Hermanns’ appeal because none had property adjoining 220 King Road besides the Hermanns by agreeing the Hermanns’ standing was enough. They decided that as a result, they didn’t need to concern themselves with whether stricter state law governing this, as it would in District Court, or looser Park City standards applied.
The Hermanns’ attorney, Justin Key, attempted to show that the historical record going back to 1985 demonstrated that building heights in the Sweeney MPD could never be higher than 27 feet, while city planners and the applicant team went through history as well to refute these and other claims because the master planning district and plat notes essentially override the historic district below.
As part of the process to attain 43 acres of open space on Treasure Hill, eight larger lots with larger homes were granted. Seven overlap with the historic district, which has made Planning Commission decisions about them more complicated.
The fact of the current two homes at 220 King Road being “non-conforming” to the MPD and the historic district’s rules about height and size has added to the complexity.
The proposed home would have a slightly lower height profile, a smaller building footprint as measured at all the other properties in that subdivision, and fewer square feet of living space than the houses there now.
Keys showed an image of the proposed home as if entirely above ground at the scale of the 23,000-square-foot City Hall to some audible gasps in the audience of 60 people at the time. Brilliant theatrics, Prince attorney Wade Budge conceded when he began presenting the case defending the Planning Commission’s decision, but irrelevant and the Prince home while large, certainly, would be less than half the actual size of the Marsac Building. An eye test of the homes on the property now likewise reflects an image sized more to impact than scale. The profile of the proposed home is lower than the current houses.
Sixteen people spoke during public comments, none sticking to instructions to focus on whether they thought the Planning Commission followed the law and correct procedures in applying the mix of zoning areas and code on a property governed by the historical district, the Sweeey MPD above it and plat notes to its decision.
James Doilney spoke with suspicion about the state Legislature passing legislation in February that strengthens the power of plat notes, the instructions tailored to an individual property. The Planning Commission amended the plat notes for 220 King Road to set the height; the measurement of the building footprint to the main structure, consistent with the other homes in the MPD; and that the property can only be used for a single family home, no longer any form of rental as it has in the past.
And it was in those plat notes where the Appeal Panel found what it concluded was the flaw in the Planning Commission’s work.
In their turn at the podium during public comments, the Hermanns complained about nuisance lawsuits Matthew Prince filed against them over their unleashed dogs and a rock wall that crossed into property newly purchased by the Princes after they appealed. They also declared the Princes purchased The Park Record to control coverage of their efforts to build a new home at 220 King Road.
Matthew Prince slipped in the size of the Hermann’s complex next door at 19,500 square feet while claiming he substantially reduced the height of his home at the end closest to the Hermann’s place from the house there now to help their view that way, which is upslope of them.
Supporters extolled the virtues of the new house, and critics expressed woe that the place would ruin Old Town. Some neighbors praised the Princes’ engagement and others said they had never met them. A couple of speakers took no overt positions but talked about the character of Park City and love for historic Old Town.
One spoke of the healing that surely would have to follow all this at some point.
The Appeal Panel afterward stuck to assessing whether the Planning Commission had followed the right procedures and laws while coming to a narrow approval with the commission’s chair breaking two ties on whether to approve conditional use permits and a 4-2 approval of the amended plat notes.
In the plat notes, Strachan found fault in how the commission dealt with the sensitive lands overlay, though the applicant and Planning Department both addressed that issue but not to form, in his view. The Planning Department with its experts was supposed review whether the sensitive lands zone indeed crossed the property or not, and if it did, prepare a conclusion for the Planning Commission to review and decide whether to accept, he said.
That piece will go back to the planners and Planning Commission. It’s a fair bet it all will wind up soon in district court. Appeal Panel members and attorneys made no secret about that throughout the hearing, especially in the wrangling over who had standing to appeal the commission’s approval in the first place.
The Prince proposal next will go through a historical design review and vote by the Historic Preservation Board — assuming, that is, they get through the Planning Commission taking another look at where the property really sits with respect to the sensitive lands overlay.