A Park City delegation is at the Winter Olympics in Italy, observing the mechanics of the Games in a fact-finding mission designed to assist officials as the municipal government appears poised to broaden the work toward the 2034 Games in the coming months.
The travelers, including Mayor Ryan Dickey, are scheduled to return shortly and are expected to distill their observations from Italy and outline how the experience will help shape talks about the upcoming Winter Olympics in Utah.
Dickey, who took office in early January, addressed the Games work he anticipated would occur in the weeks after the event in Italy. The comments, made during the campaign last fall, were in response to a Park Record inquiry about what the mayoral candidates hoped to have accomplished by late April, about two months after the end of the Winter Olympics in Milan.
Dickey said he wanted “Park City to be engaged, steady, and organized — with clear priorities, early groundwork underway, and our community meaningfully involved in shaping an Olympic plan that reflects both lessons learned and our future aspirations.”
“By then, we’ll also have launched a local Olympic steering committee that mirrors the Utah organizing structure, with subcommittees on transportation, Main Street activation, and other key issues. Our local listening tour with Olympics CEO Brad Wilson will be underway, ensuring residents’ voices are central from the very beginning,” he said.
This week, the mayor said the listening tour he mentioned in October is completed in the Wasatch Back. Dickey also outlined upcoming steps once the Games are finished in Milan, Cortina d’Ampezzo and elsewhere in the Italian Alps. Cortina d’Ampezzo is of special interest with the similarities between that ski town and Park City. He said people involved with the Games efforts are “eager to begin standing up a planning structure when we are back from Italy.”
“What I said during the campaign is certainly directionally accurate, but we’ve all learned a lot here in Cortina together and will probably evolve those ideas further, especially thinking even more regionally across the Wasatch Back,” Dickey said on Monday.
“I think the structure I described in the campaign remains our ultimate target, (but) we may have an intermediate-state that’s more at a vision and strategy level, before we break out subcommittees,” he added.
The mayor’s predecessor, Nann Worel, during the State of the City address in the spring of 2025 announced she planned to form a committee to consider early steps in the City Hall work toward the Games. Worel, though, did not seek reelection and left office in early January without having seated a committee.
There has been intermittent progress at City Hall since the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2024, nearly 10 years before the opening ceremony. More consistent progress is expected following the Games in Italy and countdown to 2034 at eight years.
Park City leaders in the coming years will make critical Games-related decisions. They will, as examples, need to finalize infrastructure concepts that could be eligible for any monies from the federal government that may become available as the state readies for the Games and craft a vision for Main Street’s role during the Games. The relationship between Park City and the Winter Olympic organizing committee will also be crucial.
The Park City area is critical to the overall Games with Park City Mountain, Deer Valley Resort and the Utah Olympic Park identified as competition venues. Transportation, security and celebration plans will be crafted, and Main Street with near certainty will be one of the popular gathering spots to celebrate the Games. There is a roster of people associated with the area involved in the organizing committee’s leadership structure, including Dickey through his role as the mayor.