A firm controlled by the Sweeney family is preparing to sell its holdings at the base of the Town Lift decades after playing one of the key roles in the development of lower Main Street.
Brothers III LLC, involving brothers Pat Sweeney, Mike Sweeney and Ed Sweeney, will put a building with six commercial spaces on the market as well as the firm’s approximately 25% ownership stake in the Town Lift Plaza garage. The largest section of the Town Lift deck will also be included. The price will be set at $27 million and the listing is expected to be posted in early December.
Pat Sweeney, who represents the firm, said on Monday that each of the brothers is in his 70s and nobody from the “next generation” is interested in managing the properties.
“It’s a lot of work, and we’re not going to get any younger,” he said.
The Town Lift base commercial properties owned by Brothers III were developed in the 1990s alongside the installation of the Town Lift at Park City Mountain. The lift and the construction of the firm’s commercial properties were important to the viability of the subsequent wider development of lower Main Street. The commercial properties have been leased over the years to a variety of businesses that typically have been linked to the tourism industry.
“I think it worked well, has worked well, for the historic district. It’s functioned, been running, for almost 40 years,” Sweeney said about the Town Lift. “It makes it possible for most of the people to walk to skiing.”
The Sweeney family, beginning in the mid-1950s, amassed significant land holdings in the Main Street core as well as hillside acreage overlooking Old Town. The patriarch, Jack Sweeney, and then the three sons oversaw the parcels with intention of the eventual development of the lands. The Town Lift Plaza was a crucial project in the 1990s with various other landowners also eyeing the possibility of the growth of lower Main Street.
A sale of the Brothers III holdings would be the second eight-digit transaction involving the Sweeney family in less than a decade. The family was one side of a partnership that sold the Treasure acreage to City Hall in 2019 in a $64 million conservation deal.
The sale of the Treasure land ended a highly charged development dispute that stretched for years. The Treasure development proposal called for a slopeside project along the route of the Town Lift, a concept that drew consistent criticism for the square footage, the design and the amount of traffic it would generate. The Treasure partnership, though, saw the project as something that could provide a boost to business on lower Main Street.
The Sweeney family at the time of the sale of the Treasure land to City Hall said there were no current plans to divest itself of the assets at the base of the Town Lift. Pat Sweeney in the spring of 2019, though, acknowledged the properties would eventually be sold as the brothers retire. Sweeney at the time noted the attractiveness from a business perspective of the garage at the Town Lift base, one of the largest privately held garages in the Main Street core, saying parking is “hard to come by.”
The Brothers III holdings at the base of the Town Lift will be put on the market as Park City leaders, Main Street businesses and the broader Park City community are considering the future of the shopping, dining and entertainment strip in an effort to ensure it remains competitive with outlying commercial districts in Summit County and Wasatch County. There are numerous ideas for improvements on or close to Main Street under discussion.