Dear Park City planning commissioners: We believe you are honest and ethical neighbors who serve Park City. We trust you to represent the community, apply the Land Management Code fairly, and protect the public interest. That trust is why your decision on the Bonanza 5-acre proposal matters.
The mayor appoints Planning Commission members with the advice and consent of the City Council. That arrangement is lawful. In this case, however, it creates a conflict of roles. The city owns the land. The mayor and council selected the developer, shaped the proposal, authorized its submission, and are negotiating the public financing. Now that government is effectively the applicant appearing before commissioners appointed through that process.
This is not an accusation of corruption or an illegal conflict. It is a test of independence. Respect for those who appointed you must not become deference to their outcome.
The Yarrow decision set the standard Park City should expect. In 2025, the Planning Commission denied that redevelopment because it failed to meet the criteria for a height exception. The proposal offered 64 affordable apartments, underground parking, pedestrian improvements, and open space. Those benefits did not overcome the required findings. Public ownership and affordable housing should not create a more forgiving standard for Bonanza.
The financial commitment makes that independence essential. Park City’s record describes an anticipated city contribution of up to $40 million. If that contribution is structured as soft loans, the interest rate, maturity, collateral, repayment priority and forgiveness, provisions have not been published. Without those terms, the public cannot know whether repayment would be meaningful or merely theoretical.
Then there is the land. The city intends to lease this valuable property for $1 per year for 60 to 99 years. Using the assumed $40 million land value discussed publicly, that nominal lease could surrender roughly another $40 million in public value. That figure is an estimate, not an appraisal. The city should publish an appraisal and market ground lease valuation before calling this a fair exchange.
The public commitment does not end there. Park City paid $19.5 million for the property, approved $7.2 million for electrical line undergrounding, and agreed to share outside development expenses within a $1 million limit.
Soil remediation and infrastructure costs remain. These amounts should not simply be added together, but neither should they be separated and minimized.
In my judgment, this is a financially engineered mixed-use commercial development draped in the language of affordable housing. It includes 106 apartments, 88 of them restricted, and 32,581 square feet of commercial space, along with underground parking, childcare, arts uses, and open space.
The affordable housing component is being used to justify the public financing, nominal land lease, height, density and other accommodations needed to make the development work.
Other Park City projects are adding affordable units. That is precisely the point. Rejecting this proposal does not reject affordable housing. It refuses to treat affordable housing as a blank check for a much larger development that would face greater scrutiny if proposed by a private applicant.
A petition opposing the project’s current direction was presented with 2,399 names. That cannot be dismissed as a small group of complainers.
Commissioners, we trust you. We believe you are our neighbors before you are appointees. Be the heroes Park City needs. Apply the same standards you applied to Yarrow and deny this proposal in its present form.
Timothy Noonan
Prospector