Affordable housing is a critical issue for Park City, Summit County and the entire Wasatch Back. The development plan for the Bonanza Park 5-acre site owned by the city is not a solution. In fact, it risks significantly setting back our housing goals. It is necessary to step back and see the larger picture as well as the particular shortcomings of this project.
Park City imports almost 11,000 full-time workers every day. Of these, over 2,500 commute from the Snyderville Basin and almost 3,000 come from other parts of Summit and Wasatch counties. The entire Salt Lake Valley, from Spanish Fork to Bountiful, contributes thousands more. Workers living within Park City boundaries total about 2,000. These are rounded numbers that change depending on how full-time jobs are defined and the data set you use.
Add to these full-time employees, seasonal workers, construction and maintenance workers and tourists, and the traffic problem becomes more understandable. The labor force we require is largely imported both from close by, 10 miles or less, and from much farther distances.
We cannot house all of these workers within Park City, so we must identify our priorities and create strategies to maintain our labor force. Park City has a stated goal of housing 15% of our workers within our boundaries requiring about 860 more deed-restricted units.
This does not even begin to seriously address a coming massive shift in labor supply. It is no longer about housing a few hundred more people in Park City and creating community.
The Deer Valley East Village development has made public statements indicating 6,000 workers will be required for it to operate. Only 600 affordable-housing options appear to be publicly discussed to date.
Workers will likely come first from Wasatch County, parts of Summit County, and the entire Salt Lake Valley, putting tremendous stress on our labor force. Competition will be on wages/benefits and commuting ease. We must think regionally and creatively, but most importantly, we must make rational choices how we spend limited funds given what is happening now in the Wasatch Back.
Unless one has truly unlimited funds, every choice to spend a dollar on a project is a lost opportunity to spend that dollar on something else. It is dishonest framing to claim that funds raised from tourists do not carry potentially significant opportunity cost to everyone else.
Misallocation of funds, no matter their source, to inferior projects hurts residents and businesses. Misallocation of funds for affordable housing prevents achieving our housing goals and hurts the pool of workers who could have benefited.
Given the labor challenges sweeping down upon us, what is the proper framework to make these choices regarding affordable housing? I believe the first is cost per deed-restricted unit. The 5-acre site at present has a sunk cost of at least $19.5 million and a projected additional investment of $40 million. Many have pointed out this number will end up being considerably higher since we are almost surely taking soil remediation risk.
For 88 deed-restricted units that is a per unit cost of $676,000. We do not allocate this investment to any market rate units or commercial development because no subsidy would be needed by any developer to build these. This amount is staggering and bleeds into the absurd.
By illustration, for this amount of money we could buy 88 three-bedroom homes with a yard and put a new self-driving Tesla in the garage within a 45-minute commute. Even if we take out the sunk cost for the land, the cost per unit is $455,000. The Studio Crossing development (albeit an incredibly unattractive project) provides 172 deed-restricted units. The subsidy required from Park City: zero dollars.
Why this difference? To make a project work with deed-restricted rent or below-market sales prices, a developer needs to have more highly profitable offsets to meet his return requirements. These come in the form of more market-rate units, more commercial development, less expensive land, or a greater per unit subsidy. To limit the subsidy, the developer needs more acreage and/or more height and density to fit in more market rate housing and commercial space. This is why affordable development in Park City is so difficult.
In Park City, land is expensive and acreage more limited. Height and density directly conflict with the clear desires of the citizens on what our community should be. It should have been no surprise that over 2,000 signatures against this project were gathered in just a few weeks.
A large survey of residents presented to our government in February 2025 concluded the following: Our top two goals are preserving our small-town feel and natural setting; our most valued characteristic is access to parks and recreation; our priority for land use is parks and open space; and our greatest challenge (71%) is traffic. So why does our council, government staff, and planners keep ignoring the overwhelming consensus of the people who live here?
Adding density anywhere in the Bonanza Park area will greatly exacerbate an already difficult traffic situation that becomes untenable in high season and at certain times of day.
The developer did their own evaluation of traffic impacts, concluding that peak morning and evening impacts would be less than three seconds. Unfortunately, it appears our Planning Commission is ready to accept this even with the obvious, massive conflict of interest.
Just within the past few years we had at great expense a full traffic evaluation done that sits on the parkcity.gov website titled Bonanza Park Small Area Plan: Stand Alone Mobility Component. It ranks five out of 11 intersections in this area already at grade F. Development of the full Bonanza area would double that to 10 intersections with an F grade and even more seriously degrade the ones already failing.
The assumptions used in the study had many added housing units but appear not to include commercial development that would draw additional traffic. Any evaluation of this project requires that it be incorporated into longer-term plans to assess its additive impact as well as any limitations it may impose on future development choices.
There were multiple recommendations to mitigate the traffic impacts of Bonanza area development, but none are addressed with this project. The piecemeal approach we are taking with this project is not adequate.
Looking forward, what are our housing needs and how much will these cost? The official goal set by our council is 860 affordable housing units. Given what is happening at Deer Valley East Village, this number may be quite low.
We need to strategize how we can maximize our affordable-housing dollars and think of additional creative strategies to hold onto our labor supply. We need to forecast the average per unit subsidy we are willing to spend and project that forward to understand the total fiscal impact that creates for any goals we establish.
It is basic financial strategic planning. At $500,000 per unit, about the additional per-unit investment required by the 5-acre site, the total subsidy bill to meet our current stated housing goals is $430 million. It won’t take much to get to half a billion dollars!
If we can drop our per unit subsidy to $100,000, which is similar to the per-unit cost of the EngineHouse project, the total funding required is $86 million, which means this $40 million could lead to 400 deed-restricted units, not 88.
If we dedicate $40 million to this one project, we have limited our ability to meet future housing needs. This project contributes only about 10% to our housing goals but greatly curtails our ability of realistically meeting the remaining 90%.
The tourists, the businesses, and the residents of this town are not a bottomless checkbook for inefficient, misguided housing projects that work against the very goals many of us otherwise support.
It is incredibly expensive to build inside the boundaries of Park City. There are smaller infill projects that make sense and redevelopment of existing housing like Holiday Village may also work. There are a few exceptional opportunities that we need to pursue that allow a developer to have offsetting profits to support below market rate housing.
The obvious first choice would be the resort parking lot developments, which are large and have high profit margins with market rate condominiums. The housing could be built onsite, or we could demand investment in other projects such as Holiday Village that may provide upwards of 190 affordable units on land already owned and dedicated to this purpose.
I am not privy to what discussions have taken place and there is little information that anyone seems willing to offer. What seems clear is that Deer Valley appears to have gotten off pretty easy with their parking lot development approval and nothing seems to be moving at either site. Why?
The second opportunity is Richardson Flats. Governing responsibility is divided by acreage between Hideout Canyon and Park City. Larry H. Miller Real Estate owns 1,000 acres here and is currently developing on the eastern portion.
The 350 acre Silver Meadows project includes 600 housing units, with 120 of them affordable at no cost to Hideout, plus commercial development including a grocery store and restaurants. It is inside the Park City School District, so we can stop fretting about our schools being depopulated.
The developer has offered to build affordable units on the western acreage controlled by Park City. There have been a myriad of excuses thrown up against this, none of which hold up to scrutiny.
For instance, “the property is currently preserved under an older deed restriction.” This can be amended as many deed restrictions have been.
“The property is polluted with toxic mine waste.” For a large enough project, this financial and permitting issue can be resolved. Larry H Miller is moving soil right now. It is being placed in an EPA-approved repository right on site that significantly lowers remediation costs.
“There is no good transportation, and it is not walkable.” There is currently a parking lot with existing bus service into Park City. The Clark Ranch project, also being developed by Park City, is not walkable into town and neither is Park City Heights.
With the commercial development going in at Richardson Flats housing developed on Park City’s land will be far more walkable to amenities than these developments. There is no reason against aggressively pursuing this huge opportunity in light of a potential labor crisis.
It is my understanding that a former elected official of Park City, who I have great admiration for, is working aggressively behind the scenes to stop any consideration of developing Richardson Flats. If true, they need to come forward publicly so we can have an open debate. Anyone who honestly supports the need for affordable housing would not cut off serious consideration of this opportunity to meet so many of our goals.
We cannot create a successful housing strategy without considering transportation and our relationship with Summit County. Summit County, just including the area within the school district boundaries, currently has 1,134 affordable deed-restricted units. An additional 500 are to be constructed at Dakota Pacific and 172 at Cline Dahle for a total of 1,806.
There are 1,007 dormitory beds for seasonal workers at Slopeside Village that also includes 169 units for full-time workers (the Canyons buildings). This compares to 829 affordable units claimed by Park City. Summit County was able to achieve these numbers even though they have half our revenue. For some reason we do not have very good data, but many of these units are occupied by people working in Park City.
The Bobsled Express should efficiently connect Kimball Junction all the way into the Park City Old Town transit center, and most of the Summit County affordable units are right on this corridor. Summit County is working to develop another 1,500 affordable units.
We do have funding resources. If there are economically reasonable projects in Summit County, we should cooperate and deed restrict some to Park City if agreement can be reached. But some mix of arrogance and bad history seems to make this impossible to the great detriment of affordable housing.
It is all particularly ironic because our own deed-restriction rules in Resolution 12-2025 specifically allow employment anywhere within the school district. This undermines our policy of not counting Park City workers living in affordable housing within the school district boundaries as well claims that only Park City-located housing, and particularly the 5-acre site, will reduce traffic. Additionally, only one unit tenant needs to work in the school district, allowing spouses and roommates to commute anywhere.
Do we believe tenants will not be traveling to the Kimball Junction area for shopping, entertainment and other needs? The entire traffic-reduction justification just doesn’t hold up. Adding close-in commuting options just makes sense when we have this large an issue.
While the Bobsled Express captures workers for Park City from the S.R. 224 corridor and some potentially from Salt Lake commuters parking at the Kimball transit center, it does not fully address capturing outlying workers commuting in.
The thousands who commute from Salt Lake and Wasatch will have the choice to take U.S. 40 directly to Deer Valley East Village. Additional satellite parking is needed to capture these commuters, along with efficient bus service into town.
The Gordo parking proposal fails at this. It does not solve the last mile problem into a congested Park City making Deer Valley East Village a more attractive commuting option. Buses entering S.R. 248 directly from Richarson Flats Road will be orders of magnitude less disruptive than a thousand cars from a Gordo parking location.
Greatly expanding the existing parking at Richardson Flats and working with the state’s proposal to add access directly from S.R. 248 and U.S. 40 is the only solution that makes sense. It captures both workers and tourists if efficient bus service and perhaps gondola options are provided.
Making this our priority is a far better allocation of capital to retain workers for Park City. Unfortunately, this discussion has been falsely framed by saying Gordo is permitted and ready to go. This framing diverts from the real discussion of whether it is the best option to solve our problems.
If retention of our labor supply is our primary goal, then further thinking out of the box may be required. For example, providing a deeply subsidized lease of a self-driving car that we provide with free dedicated charging at satellite parking may be enough to retain distant commuting workers at far lower cost than a subsidized unit while also keeping traffic congestion off our roads.
Supervised self-driving is already here. True full self-driving, which may be here in a very few years, changes the whole nature of commuting. To just illustrate the comparative economics, 1,000 Teslas could be purchased for that same $40 million.
Misleading framing carries over into many other arguments made for this project and the requirement for only considering development within Park City boundaries. We have touched on traffic and walkability. Two more deserve discussion.
First is the continued use of the word “vibrant.” We are an international winter destination resort and a regional summertime sports hub. I am not sure we can get more vibrant.
If the word refers to the age of Park City residents, this is also falsely framed. The Park City that residents experience is not bounded by invisible lines. What we experience is a larger unified whole. Our children travel out to middle school and in for high school. We travel out for shopping, activities and entertainment and county residents travel in for the same.
Park City is but a self-governing neighborhood of a larger area called the Park City School District. Park City is a little older with 21.6% over 65 versus a national average of 18%, and 16.7% under 18 versus a national average of 21.5%, according to the U.S. Census. But looking at the school district, the under 18 category is the same as the national average at 21%. Those over 65 are actually fewer at 16%. Our community is plenty vibrant.
Second is using teachers, government workers and first responders as the stalking horse to justify any housing project. We can all agree that giving these people the opportunity to live inside the boundaries of Park City would be beneficial to the community. But we need to ask each of them whether they really want to live here in a deed-restricted unit that has limitations on capturing any valuation increase.
Many of these people are fairly well paid and may have families for whom our housing options do not work. I expect many have close ties to their existing communities through school, friends and church and possibly spouses who work closer to their current residence.
So let us find out exactly how many of these people would prefer to move to Park City, and then prioritize making that happen for them.
So why does our government continue to pursue irrational and financially imprudent solutions to an issue we can all agree needs to be addressed, especially now given the sea change in the labor market we are going to have?
Every affordable housing project is deemed worthy no matter the financial cost and no matter the cost to the character of our town. Members of our council have even proposed building affordable housing in Ontario Canyon near the mine building. The attitude is that those who do not share this vision must have bad values and simply do not understand.
We non-believers are barely tolerated and no matter our numbers we can justifiably be ignored because our motivations must be selfish and immoral. This holds no matter how much we support affordable housing and simply oppose this single project that makes no financial sense, takes away from financial resources that could do far more for housing and retaining our workforce, degrades our community, and wastes an opportunity to do something truly extraordinary at this special site.
We need to get real very fast and address coming labor issues and this project does the opposite. I don’t know if there is any way to combat this situation no matter how many rational, fact-based arguments are presented and no matter how many of us voice our opposition and offer far better solutions to a universally agreed upon issue.
This attitude is also mirrored on the other side of the equation. At a Planning Commission meeting I asked a young woman who spoke in favor of the project if she understood that for the same investment we could buy her a house free and clear if she was willing to do a little commuting in a car we would also provide. I thought her answer might at least show some surprise. She stated, “I would like to have the option.”
It is difficult to deal with near religious conviction on the one hand and extraordinary entitlement on the other.
Peter Yogman
Park City