These questions do heavy lifting on the topic of workforce housing.
- Do we really need it?
- Won’t this add traffic?
- Can’t we put it somewhere else?
The 2025 City Council set a goal to create 1,864 total units of affordable housing (15% of 2032 workforce, or 12,000+ employees).
Here’s where we stand.
Affordable units in operation:
- 829 (includes Engine House)
- ~99% occupancy rate
(1% “frictional” vacancy: cleaning/repair/application processing)- Of note: 96 of Engine House’s 99 affordable units are leased.
- All others under contract/waiting for approval.
Units under construction:
- Studio Crossing, 156
- Founders Place, 2
- Park City Heights, 11
- 516 Marsac (City Project), 3
Current total: 1,001 units
Proposed:
- 5-acre site, 88 estimated
- Clark Ranch, 164 estimated
Entitled but unfunded and being re-evaluated: HOPA, 195 units
Would still need 416 units.
A place where people work but can’t afford to live isn’t a community. It also puts Park City on a downward slide from vibrant town to a demographically one-dimensional expensive place to retire — inaccessible to workers who sustain it.
A simple answer suffices for the second question: Workers who live here don’t need to get here. Research shows each in-town unit removes about 1.5 cars. This is especially true when units are enmeshed with transit improvements. which is part of the 5-acre site project’s design.
Finally, as far as putting the housing elsewhere: In 2021, the council evaluated publicly owned parcels for affordable housing. Nearly every site was taken down by intense neighborhood concern, organized opposition, and/or calls to move the housing somewhere else. Sound familiar?
We can all say we support workforce housing. Consensus is harder when an actual site is identified. The 5-acre parcel, zoned commercially for decades, was slated for far more density with virtually no public benefit, which is why the city acquired it nearly 10 years ago.
The balance of micro-density and 2 acres of green space within the same project (funded by tourist dollars, by the way) is how we protect what makes Park City special and protect what makes Park City functional.
Open space instead of infill cannot staff local businesses. We cannot house families or seniors beneath a grassy knoll. Every barrier, each request to delay to “fix what we already have,” is felt as a direct blow against affordability.
If you agree with the submission to Planning Commission that stated, “Whoever cannot afford to live here should not,” it’s important to consider that these (in)actions will not save us from density. They will sentence us to a decline in services, weaken critical community infrastructure, and hasten school enrollment’s freefall. (Park City School District is down by nearly 1,000 students since 2019-20).
If we refuse to make room for the people who sustain, run and protect this town, we become one big luxury resort with high walls and a gate that requires a golden key to unlock. And that is not a community at all.
Molly Miller
Park City councilor