Park City should stop treating in-town affordable housing as a moral requirement. It is not how housing markets work, and forcing the issue on high-value land creates costly, inefficient results.
The Bonanza site is a recent clear example.
When I started work in downtown Seattle in the 1980s, I could not afford to live nearby. We rented north of the city and commuted about 45 minutes on I-5. After saving for a down payment, we bought an older house that was still a long commute.
Years later, with a higher income, we moved closer and bought a modest house in an area with better schools. That is the normal pattern. People do not live where they feel entitled to live.
The choice is a personal calculation. Schools, commute, privacy, space, and cost are weighed differently by every household. Government housing programs interfere with that calculation.
No one who works in Park City is owed a home in Park City. Nearby communities are less expensive and often less than a 30-minute drive. Using public money to put subsidized units on some of the city’s most valuable land does not make housing abundant. It spends a scarce asset so a small number of households can occupy a premium location.
The Park City Planning Commission is reviewing a mixed-use plan for the city’s 5-acre site at Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard, purchased in 2017 for $19.5 million. The concept includes 106 housing units, 88 of them income-restricted, plus commercial space and open space. Reports indicate the city would contribute about $40 million and make the land available on highly favorable terms.
Whether that contribution is a grant or a loan, and what the city receives in
return, has not been explained clearly to the public.
The housing model is also unsound. Similar apartments on the same prime land would rent at different prices under an income formula, not because the units differ, but because a bureaucracy assigned the tenants a category.
That is not a market. It is rationing by formula, with the resentment and eligibility games that follow.
Land development is not Park City government’s job. The city’s role is to set the rules and let the private market decide what a site can support. Owning this parcel and partnering with a developer to build housing puts the city in the real estate business. That is not its mandate.
If the community wants the land used as a park or an arts site, then let’s do that. Do not have the city act as landlord and co-developer.
Either sell the Bonanza land at something closer to its reported market value of about $40 million and use the proceeds for tax relief for simpler units on cheaper ground —which would yield more units per dollar than income-priced apartments on prime land — or keep the land for a use the city is actually charged with: a park or an arts site.
I oppose the current Bonanza proposal. Do not spend this parcel on income-priced apartments and restrict the city to its mandated role.
Dean Brooks
Park City