Have you heard the slogan “More Park, Less City” recently? It targets a project our community has been discussing for years in the Prospector area. After years of discussion, the project has matured into something Park City badly needs: a vibrant mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood with market-rate housing, income-restricted housing, arts and cultural spaces, shops and restaurants — and some open space.
Yet a small, vocal and well-organized group is campaigning against it, arguing that we should build a park instead.
A park? Really?
We are not San Francisco or New York City, where open space is scarce and every remaining acre may need to be protected. We live in Park City. We are surrounded by extraordinary open space. Less than a quarter-mile from the proposed development is a major public park in which our community just invested $17 million. Within roughly half a mile are world-class hiking and biking trails.
So why, on this particular piece of land, do we suddenly need another park instead of housing?
This site is near the intersection of our two major transportation arteries, S.R. 248 and S.R. 224. It is served by transit. It is near schools, recreation, healthcare, shopping and other services.
It is precisely the kind of location where good planning says housing should go. And if we genuinely believe that Park City desperately needs more income-restricted housing, where better to build it?
The proposed project would provide that housing alongside market-rate homes, restaurants, shops, cultural uses and, yes, approximately 2 acres of open space. Instead of an isolated housing project, it would create a real neighborhood where people of different incomes could live, work, shop and participate in the same community.
Opponents frequently raise traffic as an objection. This is a legitimate concern, but let’s not ignore the enormous number of people who commute into town every day because the people our community depends upon increasingly cannot afford to live here.
Teachers, health care workers, restaurant employees, retail workers, tradespeople, city employees and many others still have to get to Park City. If they cannot live here, they drive here. Housing closer to jobs and transit is not the enemy of traffic reduction. It is part of the solution.
Let’s elevate the debate to a larger and more uncomfortable question: Who is Park City for?
At a recent town hall, one supporter of the project put it particularly well, as reported in this newspaper: “I really don’t want to live in a town with more of me. I want to live in a town with people of all ages and abilities.”
She went further: “When I hear some of the wording around opposition to this project, I finally came around to realizing that I was hearing code, to me. When I hear ‘*more park,’ I hear more of me, more of us. And when I hear ‘less city,’ I hear less of ‘them.’”
Who are “they”?
They are the people who teach our children, serve our meals, repair our homes, staff our stores, care for us when we are sick, maintain our city and make the Park City lifestyle possible. They may have less wealth than many current Park City residents. They may be younger. They may be raising families. They may come from different backgrounds and, yes, they may make Park City more racially and economically diverse. It is part of what makes a place a real community.
Can we remain a town where at least some of the people who work here can also live here or should we be a rich people enclave? We need this housing and what goes with it. We need more neighbors who work in town, not just some who come here to recreate.
I wholeheartedly support this project in its current form. And to the gentleman who approached me aggressively with his “More Park, Less City” petition, and to the others stridently campaigning against this development, I would ask a different question: Can we find it in ourselves to make room in Park City for the people Park City needs, the people that make it a community?
Perhaps the choice before us isn’t really “More Park, Less City.” It is: “More community, or less community?”
Philippe Astié
Park City