Our titles are less important than our length of time — a combined total of 500-plus years — of serving Park City. And this is just from 10 people. There are multiples of that number who could have been included, but we have started small.
Who we are
Ski shop founder; cookie business founder; two former mayors, each in office for a record three terms; school teachers in the Marsac in the ’70s, a former school board member; award-winning jeweler and longtime board member and chair of the Park City Historic Society; Main Street restaurant owners since the ’80s, generational home builder in multiple states; former award-winning editor of the Park Record; musician; handyman; founder of the Park City Performing Arts Center; former chair of the Utah Office of Tourism; chair of the National Ability Center; National Endowment of the Arts study recipient; Chamber’s Spirit of Hospitality award winner; Governors Award for Leadership in the Arts. And a fistful of other honors.
We can all honestly say this is the most dysfunctional state of the city we have ever seen. We are heartbroken by the tone and style and lack of leadership by the majority of the current council.
It appears to reflect a national tone of mean-spiritness.
Ideas like trying to reshape the longest stretch of one of the very few main streets anywhere in the West on the National Registrar of Historical sites to make it look like a bad patchwork quilt where some of the largest key buildings are shuttered mostly and only function during high season for exclusive events is rather shortsighted and filled with self-interest.
We are watching multi-storied buildings be proposed in alleyways, creating shadows and blocking the natural light.
Key city staff members are being verbally abused weekly by elected officials.
We have lost our way.
In the West, we always have points of disagreement. It is the warp in the woof that is the fabric of our communities. Call it the cowboy in us. But lately, it has gone from high-level planning and concern for a shared successful future for all residents to so much self-interest that it sounds like a lot of hissing from a basket of snakes.
Civility and productivity have been abandoned and replaced by arrogance and low-level wannabe gangster behaviors.
To try and understand and navigate this environment, a group of longtime civic leaders started gathering this winter — first to understand and then, hopefully, to be understood. We created a series of lunches with invited council people and key staff (two by two) to test the waters of the dysfunction holding back so many good city folks from doing their best work.
This experiment is based on an international group started by Richard Branson and executed by Park City resident Jeanne Oelwang more than a decade ago, called The Elders. Former leaders from Nelson Mandala to Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson came together to look for local solutions to global problems. We are in no way associated with that illustrious group but rather, inspired by their accomplishments.
We are not looking beyond our immediate surroundings for this current phase. From city issues to county ones and the overlapping one of the school district, there is plenty to work on.
Right here.
Right now.
We have boiled it down to first examining the dysfunction of this current city government. In time, we plan to expand our inquiry to the county government and the school board, which is a blanket covering both city and county.
And right now — in this critical moment — we are focused on the plans for the five acres that have sat fallow for eight-plus years. Sat ever since a former group in Marsac decided to buy the land and tear the buildings down and then decide later what should grow there. What has grown, to a large degree, is a spectacular dust bowl and eyesore as a critical entrance point to our town.
Over the years, there have been endless studies, consultants and workshops, and out-of-state trips looking how to mold the key focus at the time of purchase — an arts and culture district. Which has taken so long that two of the entities once looking at building on that land have gone away.
The Kimball Art Center remains committed to building, and we should find a respectful way to make them the eye-catching anchor. Current drawings have them needing around an acre of space.
Which leaves four whole acres that could be something beautiful and useful and needed. Instead, the plans show tall buildings to stack people in and some maker spaces (which should be included but with a more creative spirit) and some support retail.
At the same time, the city has been looking to expand the current senior center and move it to a location by City Park (the Mawhinney lot next to the skate park). In trying to understand the needs of the seniors, we have discovered there are subgroups that exist. This new center should work well for folks to gather who already live independently and have access to health care.
What is missing (in our entire county now) turns out to be any stepdown living for seniors who might need some assistance. Some who need affordable tiny spaces to live and others who need a care facility.
We are a community who can pride itself on all the activities and safeguards we have provided for our youth. But as Baby Boomers who mostly arrived in Park City in the ’70s, we have been expecting to be forever young.
Creating a mixed use environment should mean affordable housing for young people getting started in life and elderly people ready to ramp down. If that existed, some of the housing shortage would shift, as multi-bedroom homes would become available when seniors segue into tiny homes.
Years ago, a forward-thinking council bought the former fire station land on Park Avenue. That land was transformed into a series of affordable small homes. It is a living example of the possible.
As Parkites, we have zero authentic skin in the game at the project known as Cline Dahle being developed by the county in the Jeremy Ranch area. We know it is a larger chunk of land than Bonanza Park with different topography. But the quality of the three proposals is stunning — and such a contrast to our singular choice now for Bonanza Park.
So we have arrived at the big X on the map. We are HERE. This is a moment in time when we can watch civility, creativity and authentic concern blow away like the dust has been blowing for years now on this Bonanza land.
Or we can step into the moment and be bold.
Be bold, little town.
With respect and gratitude,
Brad Olch, Dana Williams, Hans Fuegi, Ron Butkovich, Ed and Debbie Axtel, Jana Cole, Sydney Reed, Teri Orr, Val Chin
Park City