Park City on Wednesday marked the preservation of the Treasure acreage with a ceremony in the shadow of the prized land that served as the culmination of decades of effort to protect the hillside and an opportunity to celebrate one of City Hall’s great conservation successes.
The municipal government in the spring of 2019 acquired the 105 acres overlooking Old Town along the route of the Town Lift in a $64 million conservation deal. The acquisition ended a bitterly contested development dispute that stretched for years before the agreement was reached for City Hall to purchase the land from the Treasure partnership.
Park City in the six years since the acquisition crafted plans for the perpetual protection of Treasure from development. Leaders recently approved the open space protections for the land, a key step, through an instrument known as a conservation easement. Under such an easement, the land remains with City Hall, but the development rights are stripped from the acreage. A third party — the Summit Land Conservancy — will hold and enforce the easement. The approval of the conservation easement is seen as a critical step in the process of protecting the land, leading to the timing of the celebration on Wednesday.
A crowd of people from Old Town and elsewhere in Park City gathered at a trailhead on Lowell Avenue, on the edge of the land, for the ceremony. Park City officials and people who live nearby the land were in attendance. Some at the event were involved in the talks about the Treasure development proposal itself and supported the municipal acquisition that blocked a project.
Mayor Nann Worel, Summit Land Conservancy CEO Cheryl Fox and youngsters cut a ribbon at the trailhead as part of the festivities.
Fox in her remarks to the crowd called Wednesday a “momentous day” and talked about the time, energy and monies that went into the acquisition as she also spoke about the “massive” disruption a development on the land would have caused. Fox described needing to strategize in the effort to sway Park City voters to support a ballot measure that provided most of the monies for the acquisition of Treasure, which was, by a wide margin, the most expensive of City Hall’s conservation deals.
There were also comments during the event about the role played by a group that opposed the Treasure development as well as the one played by Teri Orr, a longtime figure in Park City’s arts community who is credited with assisting in facilitating the discussions between City Hall and the Treasure side that led to the agreement.
There were development rights granted in the mid-1980s, when Park City leaders of that era voted in favor of an overall approval involving the Treasure land and nearby parcels. Other projects that were part of the 1980s-era approval were eventually developed, but the bulk of the rights remained intact and were attached to the hillside, which serves as a scenic backdrop to Old Town.
The Treasure side — initially the Sweeney family and then a partnership involving the family and an investor — spent years in talks with the Park City Planning Commission about a project encompassing upward of 1 million square feet. The developers saw the concept as reflecting the original approval and argued a project would boost businesses in the Main Street core. Opponents argued a development like the one proposed would loom over Old Town and attract lots of traffic to the historic neighborhood.
There was limited progress in the discussions over several rounds of intense talks starting in 2004. City Hall and the Treasure side eventually launched negotiations about a conservation deal. Those talks, also difficult, resulted in the $64 million agreement for City Hall to acquire the land.
Mayor Nann Worel, who was a member of the Park City Council and the Planning Commission prior to winning the community’s top political office, delivered some of the key remarks on Wednesday, calling the protection of Treasure “a milestone for our city because it is celebrating the power of partnerships and the courage to think boldly and creating a legacy of leadership in Park City.”
“Treasure Hill’s story reflects decades, I mean decades, of perseverance, of community action and of visionary leadership,” Worel said.
She talked about the development proposal and the movement against the project.
“And that opposition is what kept the dream of preservation alive for over 30 years,” Worel said.
She recognized four of her predecessors as mayor starting in the early 1990s, city councilors, planning commissioners, City Hall staffers and Orr. Worel also acknowledged the Sweeney family’s “stewardship of this land over decades.”
“Every single person that had a part in saving this land today I thank from the bottom of my heart. Because we wouldn’t be standing here without the hard work and the dedication and the willingness to work together by literally thousands of our residents. And my heartfelt gratitude truly goes out to each and every one,” she said.