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Welcome to The Park Record’s 2022 edition of Mile Post, our annual report on key indicators in our changing community.

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Some people call it the “shoutiest debate on the internet,” and with good reason — the lack of not only affordable housing but housing in general impacts communities on a national level. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, for instance, says there is a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes, affecting 11 million low-income families.

In Utah, Summit County and much of the rest of the state are feeling the crunch — and have been for quite some time. The challenge of satisfying the need for affordable housing was an issue long before the pandemic occurred.

“The real race is to create more dwelling units than households,” said Jeff Jones, economic development director for Summit County. “From 2010 to 2020, the housing gap in Utah shows a shortage of 44,500 units. It used to be that we developed enough housing units to where we could keep this in balance, but it’s become more challenging, particularly coming out of recession.”

Jones said developers were hesitant to reenter the housing market following the Great Recession, so communities fell behind on housing production.

“But people were still moving into the area for jobs while we fell behind in production, and we’ve been trying to play catch-up ever since,” he said.

Jones said the affordable housing shortage has broad impacts on the Park City community, acting as a force multiplier on issues such as traffic congestion. More people having to commute into Park City to reach their jobs, for instance, increases traffic on S.R. 224 and S.R. 248.

Yet, while most people in Park City support the ideal of affordable housing, not everyone is eager when a development is proposed near their neighborhood.

“The issue of acceptance is also a unique challenge,” said Jones. “Building a home is often a person’s largest investment. Many people don’t react in a positive way to new housing projects going in nearby. So you have the pressure to build more housing, but you also have the pressure of people who are less accepting of new growth.”

However, Summit County is already experiencing natural growth, Jones said.

“The last assessment completed illustrated we have an annual demand for affordable workforce housing around 400 units needed per year based upon our net natural increase and our net migration,” he said.

As winter nears, the need for service and hospitality workers stretches to around 6,000 jobs. Yet only 38.6% of Summit County’s workforce lives in the community, Jones said.

When Jones asked the Summit County Council what percentage of the workforce they want to capture, three council members indicated they’d like to see that number move closer to 50%.

Reaching that goal is likely to be challenging, as the issue of affordable housing has vexed many rosters of local elected officials over the years. But progress is being made.

“We have a number of housing projects in the pipeline right now, and we need to see what our numbers look like after some of those units are complete,” said Jones, referring to units at Silver Creek Village and a workforce project at Canyons Village involving 169 units and 1,100-plus pillows.

When companies move to Summit County, where their employee base will live is part of the conversation. The company must be able to recruit employees. If housing is not available, it jeopardizes the business. Summit County already has an inclusionary requirement, meaning that if a developer builds a new commercial space, they must set aside 20% of a project for affordable housing. Jones confirmed that applies to 80% of the area in Summit County.

“I think everybody is trying to find the best solution for housing affordability,” Jones said. “A lot is happening on the state level where people are trying to understand the needs and examine the best way to facilitate the production of housing. Hopefully, we all get smarter about how we build our cities and communities.”

Jones would like to see future decisions lead to housing that matches the employment sectors. He hopes this amenity-rich environment is something leaders can make available to those who work in Summit County.

“For Summit County, the main thing is we want to be responsible stewards of our environment so that what we pass down to future generations is equal to or better than what we currently have,” Jones said.

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The coronavirus pandemic couldn’t stop last year’s Live PC Give PC.
In fact, COVID-19 may have helped the all-day fundraising event that ran from midnight to midnight on Nov. 6 gain a record amount of donors as well as funds for Summit County nonprofits, said Christine Coleman, vice president of communications and marketing for Park City Community Foundation, which organizes the event.

“We had nearly 1,000 more donors than we had in 2019, and that was truly amazing because we were in the midst of COVID,” Coleman said. “We really didn’t know what to expect.”

After tallying the numbers, Live PC Give PC had more than 6,000 unique donors give $3.4 million to 113 nonprofits, according to Coleman.

“We had nearly 1,000 more donors than we had in 2019, and that was truly amazing because we were in the midst of COVID. We really didn’t know what to expect.”

“We raised $1 million more than we did the year before, and I think it’s because people wanted to support all the nonprofits that had supported them during COVID,” she said. “I think people were ready to open up their pocketbooks.”

The numbers continue to amaze Coleman because the day of fundraising had to be executed differently in the past due to safety issues surrounding the pandemic.

“We usually hold the big tally party at High West Distillery, but we couldn’t do that due to COVID-19,” she said. “So we decided to have a parade that wound through many residential areas.”

The Park City Community Foundation also created a three-hour livestream that featured videos from 80 or more nonprofits and interviews with donors and nonprofit executive directors, Coleman said.

“Part of the success is because all the nonprofits did an amazing job reaching old and new donors,” she said.

The foundation also tried to reach people who may not have heard about the fundraiser, Coleman said.

“We appointed Neighborhood Ambassadors, which was new last year,” she said. “They were volunteers who signed up to talk with folks in their neighborhoods, put up some posters and throw socially distanced donation parties. It was all about involving our entire community.”

Coleman also credits longtime donors who celebrate Live PC Give PC as a local holiday.

“There are people who get so excited and take time off of work or their day to volunteer their time,” she said. “They are out on the street corners waving signs and recruiting donors.”

Last year marked Live PC Give PC’s 10th anniversary, and the day of giving has raised more than $16 million for local nonprofits since its inception in 2010, Coleman said.

Still the Park City Community Foundation’s definition of success for Live PC Give PC is not based on the amount of money it raises, she said.

“It’s about how many donors we can get,” Coleman said. “So, the fact that so many people came out last year and gave small, medium and large amounts blew us away.”

The goal for this year’s event, which will be held Nov. 5, is 6,500 donors, she said.

“Because of the coronavirus delta variant, we can’t do the High West party again, so we are going to host an outdoor party under the stars,” Coleman said. “We’re still working on finding a venue, but since it will be outside people will be able to socially distance and we can welcome all ages, unlike High West, which is a bar for ages 21 and older.”

For information about 2021 Live PC Give PC, visit livepcgivepc.org/giving-events/pc21/home.

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In the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, many Parkites feared the health crisis could topple the local economy. Non-essential businesses throughout the county were ordered to temporarily close. Unemployment skyrocketed to levels dwarfing even those seen during the Great Recession. The prospect of the tourism industry collapsing, leading to widespread business closures, was not far-fetched.

A year and a half later, it’s clear that nothing approximating a worst-case scenario ultimately materialized. Businesses reopened. Tourists came in the summer and again in the winter. Ski season not only happened but surpassed most expectations.

The Park City economy, in short, proved remarkably resilient.

As the second summer in the coronavirus era comes to a close, Parkites now have every reason to be optimistic, according to Jonathan Weidenhamer, City Hall’s economic development manager.

“At a high level, I would say we’ve recovered,” he said. “We’ve recovered in different ways. But in terms of performance, in terms of sales and sales tax, in terms of visitation, in terms of busyness and all the things that come with it, I think we’ve recovered to not even pre-coronavirus levels but actually to our best performance ever.”

One of the first indications that the pandemic would not sink the economy came last summer, when the town was busy despite concerns about the illness and the cancellations of the events that typically bring visitors such as the annual Fourth of July parade and the weekly Park Silly Sunday Market.

Weidenhamer said visitors drove from places as far flung as Texas and California in search of Park City’s abundant outdoor recreation opportunities, which many saw as a COVID-safe entertainment option. In past summers, visitors who drove to town typically came from within a three-hour radius.

Meanwhile, second-home owners — who either already had a home here or decided to buy one — viewed Park City as an ideal place to ride out the pandemic. Their contributions were crucial. They pumped money into the economy with each takeout order from a restaurant and every time they patronized a Main Street shop, said Erik Daenitz, the deputy budget director at City Hall.

“Inasmuch as that adds a persistent source of demand … that is a good thing, in that it creates a sort of base, a higher base, especially seen in the shoulder seasons,” he said. “That’s a trend we’ve been seeing in our models and in the empirical data.”

Those same factors remained at play throughout the winter. Despite concerns that the spread of the virus could force the mountain resorts to stop the lifts, as it did in March of 2020, the ski season not only started on time and continued through its scheduled end but saw Utah set a new record for skier days, with 5.3 million.

And now, at the tail end of another busy summer — this one aided by the COVID-19 vaccination effort and the return of large-scale events — Weidenhamer and Daenitz are optimistic that the economic momentum will persist.

That would be welcome news for Jennifer Wesselhoff, the president and CEO of the Park City/Chamber Bureau. She said the community has been fortunate to have weathered the pandemic better than many other places in the country but that the recovery has been uneven for some industries. She pointed to businesses such as restaurants, event producers, catering companies and meeting planners as ones that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.

A strong fall shoulder season followed by a stellar winter could go a long way toward helping those industries get back to full strength — though a tight labor market now presents a different hurdle.

“The challenge now is just we don’t have enough employees to manage to that maximum capacity,” she said. “I don’t really know of many businesses at all who are operating at max capacity. Almost every business you talk to has vacancies.”

Still, compared to the outlook in the spring of 2020, the economic picture is remarkably positive, Weidenhamer and Daenitz said. And Parkites have every reason to believe that the turmoil that roiled the economy in 2020 is truly in the rear-view mirror.

At the same time, they can be assured that, even once the pandemic is over once and for all, many of its effects will remain, though not necessarily in a negative way.

Daenitz expects, for instance, that the trend of visitors making lodging reservations closer to a vacation rather than booking months in advance will continue, while restaurants that didn’t offer takeout prior to the pandemic are likely to provide that service going forward.

Those, he said, are just two of many examples of how a generational health crisis will leave a lasting mark on the Park City economy, even if it didn’t, ultimately, crush it.

“The impacts and effects of COVID,” he said, “are likely to be something that will stay with us in perpetuity.”

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Where were you on March 11, 2020, when the first known case of COVID-19 in Park City was discovered? From that day forward, the community was transformed by a virus — and health care workers, in particular, had their lives upended.

Three days after the first case was found, Dr. Wing Province, medical director of Park City Hospital, recalls a local hotel called to report that one of its employees was COVID-19 positive. They wanted to send 100 people to the hospital for testing. And the pace for health care workers never slowed.

“It was an exciting time. Throw in an earthquake, and it was an interesting month,” Province said, referencing the March 18 tremor that shook Park City along with the Salt Lake Valley. “But we were lucky to have the support of Intermountain Healthcare and the support of our health care workers. They were phenomenal and so resilient. They wanted to get in there, help, and do everything they could for the community.”

A year and a half later, Province is proud of his medical team, and he also recognizes the combined efforts of local leadership, including Rich Bullough, who led the Summit County Health Department’s response to the pandemic before his retirement this August.

“I need to give credit to Rich Bullough and his staff,” said Province. “His leadership set the tone for the state, and he showed a lot of courage in the sense that he got pushback for the bold moves he made to keep the county safe.”

Bullough, for his part, said he is also proud of how the community has handled the pandemic.

“In March of 2020, at the onset of the pandemic, Summit County had among the highest incidence rates per capita in the entire nation,” said Bullough, who was the director of the Health Department. “The community rallied to protect one another.”

A major turning point in the county’s pandemic response was the approval of COVID-19 vaccines. Bullough recalled that Intermountain Healthcare immediately stood up a vaccine clinic in partnership with the mass vaccine clinic administered by the Summit County Health Department at the Utah Film Studios.

“Together, and with other partners, enough vaccines were administered that Summit County now has the highest vaccination rate in the state and among the highest in the nation,” Bullough said.

According to state data in late August, 80.5% of Summit County residents had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while 70.7% of residents were fully vaccinated.

“I should give a shout out to the volunteers in the community who stepped up to help us in our clinics,” said Province. “They would stand out in the rain and cold to help vaccinate their neighbors. … If you look at it, with the onset of a new virus, there’s a lot of people who are alive today, in part, because of those volunteers.”

But the work continued as fall approached as health care workers — already exhausted from a year and a half of treating COVID patients — look warily toward the next few months amid a statewide surge in cases spurred by the delta coronavirus variant.

“Many people think this crisis is over because businesses are opening and many areas are lifting masks mandates, but for health care workers, we are heading toward what may be the worst time,” said Province. “We have sicker people coming into our hospitals who need our help.”

Whether people want help is another story. Province said the politicization of the pandemic has health care workers caught in the middle.

“Not long ago, people looked to us with hope and gratitude,” Province said. “Now, we are seeing more patients, working with fewer resources, and we often treat patients who are as mean as you can imagine.

“Morale is low,” he added, “and workers are just exhausted.”

If there was a time to reach out to a valued health care worker — this is it.

“One of the messages we would love people to know is that this (pandemic) is not over. And those health care workers that this community depended on during the pandemic need our help and support now,” said Province. “Our community is filled with amazing people. Not only the health care workers and volunteers but also the people who put the care of others in front of their own needs by getting vaccinated.”

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While many beloved businesses temporarily closed their doors last spring due to COVID-19, the Park City economy rebounded from the shutdowns quickly. And with vaccines readily available and businesses reopened to the public or increasing capacity, the pieces are in place for a continued economic boom.

The only thing missing is the workers.

Across the country, businesses in the service industry like retail shops and restaurants are ready to kick things into high gear but struggling to find staff to hire. Jennifer Wesselhoff, president and CEO of the Park City Chamber/ Bureau, said the hiring situation is a nationwide crisis and Park City is not immune.

“With declining fertility rates, baby boomers leaving the workforce, women not re-entering the workplace, the uncertainty of kids in school and virtually no-net migration growth in Summit County, the labor supply has dwindled to the point of crisis level,” she said.

Wesselhoff said businesses are taking steps such as closing for lunch or on certain days, raising wages, enhancing benefits and allowing more schedule flexibility to attract and retain staff, “but the situation is dire now and will only increase during peak winter season.”

Wesselhoff said the end of federal unemployment insurance has brought some more people back to the workforce, but not enough to fill every open position.

“Everyone is short-staffed,” she said. “There is no one to fill the gaps. But our businesses are resilient.”

She said the shoulder season basically no longer exists, and that’s left service industry workers further exhausted.

“Owners, managers and supervisors are cleaning rooms and washing dishes,” she said.

Brooks Kirchheimer, co-owner of Hearth & Hill in Newpark, said he thinks just about every restaurant in the Park City area has at least one opening posted.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure we are fully staffed, but inevitably the problem facing the entire hospitality industry is that many former employees have changed careers or relocated, which has created a shortage of candidates,” he said.

Kirchheimer said his restaurant has offered full medical benefits to full-time employees since it opened, and has gone further in order to attract employees: a 401k with a company match after a year of employment and a free daily family meal, to name a few perks.

“In addition, we give our current associates a referral bonus if they have a friend join our team,” he said. “Plus, we’re a growing company, so we’re able to offer career advancement opportunities.”

A common refrain from current and potential employees, Kirchheimer said, is a desire for a comfortable workplace, even over higher wages.

“For many, the pandemic put a lot of things in perspective, so employees are seeking out opportunities that suit their personal desires for the future as well,” he said. “Basically, they prefer to be at a place that they enjoy and feel valued personally as people and not just as employees.”

A point of frustration Kirchheimer said he and other employers in the service industry are facing is that employees are much more likely to walk off the job abruptly.

“Because the landscape has shifted and the demand is so high for workers, those employees will probably get hired somewhere else in town the same day,” he said.

Shirin Spangenberg, who co-owns Escape Room Park City, said she recently had an employee walk out within an hour of their first shift after receiving an attractive offer from their former employer to return.

“It’s an employee market right now,” she said. “We have paid more, cut back our hours and are now thinking of shutting down a couple of days a week.”

Escape Room Park City was about to move into a new location so it could expand, Spangenberg said, but she decided not to out of fear of being unable to staff it adequately. She said many of the employees who would normally commute in from surrounding “bedroom” communities like Heber City no longer have to do so, as they can work from home for similar pay.

“They don’t need to come to Park City for a bigger paycheck,” she said. “The solutions are hard to find.”

Both Wesselhoff and Kirchheimer pointed to the potential return of foreign workers on J-1 visas this winter as a potential boon, though it will not be enough to fill the current gap. Looking further into the future, Kirchheimer said he is hopeful more permanent solutions can be found.

“I know this is a hot topic, but affordable housing will be crucial to the growing economy of Park City,” he said. “As this town has always been a center for tourism and hospitality, it’s important for us to have permanent residents to create a more robust workforce to support those industries.

“In order to do that, Park City needs to ensure it is equitable to all with fair housing options, which will only attract more workers to the area as we continue to grow.”

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Marking a place in time — puttinganailinit—in a year that felt like shapeshifting Jello — is kinda difficult.

We are still full of “known knowns and known unknowns,” and it all feels pretty fluid and stuck in the same moments. Wearing a mask is uncomfortable and hot and just might save your life and other people’s lives. We thought vaccines would make us bulletproof and that we could return mostly to life as we knew it with full body hugs and BBQs when we were all double-vaxxed. And when spring came we felt a measure of both hope and relief. And we ate inside at trusted restaurants and gathered with good friends. And hugged again.

And then that damn delta variant showed up and crashed the party. And now we need to return to protocols that require vigilance or death. It is another hard year ahead. Election years bring out the issues, in ways we look at less deeply in other years. Development and roadways and toxic soil and what is art and what is culture and why they are vital to appreciating our understanding of our place on the planet.

There was only one time (that I recall in 40-plus years) the Park City School District ever failed to pass a school bond election — and that was the last one. It became a hydra-headed monster that in the 11th hour threw in a fieldhouse proposal, with officials thinking who will notice another $12 million? The bond was for $56 million as part of a proposal that would cost $66 million altogether and included $12 million for the fieldhouse and other athletic improvements. And jock parents talked in a jock circle and convinced themselves they knew how the folks in the Basin would vote. It was a really bad, un-educated guess. They were asking for money for the critically needed classroom infrastructure and then a giant hot fudge sundae on the side. We love our kids and educators, and we want to provide them with what they need to successfully educate and be educated in spaces that allow for continued great learning to happen. If only teachers could teach board members (and engaged parents and voters) what elements/spaces are most needed to better teach students. And then — let those educators run the election. And yes, parents would still be needed to campaign, along with dedicated senior citizens who know a successful community only exists when the school system has the smartest buildings and the smartest faculty we can afford.

As to the bond amount the School District is seeking this time around — let’s be abundantly transparent about the money we need and what we already have. If we need what was once tossed around as $150 million to fix our schools and we’re only bonding for about $80 million because we are “hoping to raise the rest or borrow another $50 million” “from other sources,” shouldn’t we identify those other sources before we feel confident to vote for this? Clearly, nobody runs a major, multi-structure proposal like this in the real world and says “we hope we will have enough money when we need it to build it out fully. Trust us and we’ll figure it out later.” Ask them at, say, Goldman Sachs how that would fly. No bank loans like that. If it is true the district has already secured a source for that extra outside funding, they need to share that information with the public. We need educated and trusting and confident voters to get this critical bond passed. So nobody puts (our) Baby in the corner of the (overcrowded) classroom.

The county, meanwhile, hopes to run an election of maybe $50 million for open space. This is such a no-brainer. The county is late to the fencepost on saving space — something that Park City has done in a spectacular fashion for decades. We moved here for the open space — not a series of pop-up box developments or sprawl we were all too familiar with in the places we left behind. We should be able to jumpstart this rather modest fund, really, given the price of real estate everywhere in the country. And though we often have an US-and-THEM kinda mentality — we all live downstream and we all live in the same damn county.

Of course our relationship in Park City of working “together” with the county was, for decades, separate and somewhat unequal. We were the favored child who brought home the trophies. Sundance and the Olympics and bike races and arts and culture events that were filled with national names. The county had the fair and the rodeo and all that stunning farm and ranchland we thought of as “our” open space. It wasn’t. It belonged to generational landholders who preserved the land for their children to farm/ ranch. And the kids are alright — they just don’t want to stay down on the farm. And now all that land is being carved up rather quickly. The county (which again, is US) wants to start saving open space, too. We need to vote for this fund. Four more years will be too late. Recently, I saw there was a new business listing in Kamas called the Shamanic Twist Wellness Center. Which I intend to visit, but just to be clear — this is no longer your grandmother’s Kamas.

It is kinda difficult to take the temperature of an entire county at this marker in time. But right now — if I am honest — it all feels like a shaking bowl of scary lime-green Jello. Become informed and vote — by mail or with a mask or with a fox or after you have eaten green eggs and ham (locally sourced). There is only one way to change what happens in a democracy — we vote.

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As the coronavirus pandemic hit in the spring of 2020 and forced an early end to what was on pace to be a record-breaking ski season, it was clear that the health crisis would be a blow to Park City’s tourism industry. The questions were how much would it hurt, and for how long.

The answers won’t be entirely clear until the pandemic is over for good. But fortunately for Park City and those who depend on the health of the town’s tourism industry, the fallout has not been nearly as bad as many initially feared.

And as the 2021-22 winter approaches, there is plenty to be happy about, said Jennifer Wesselhoff, who leads the organization tasked with promoting Park City as a tourist destination.

Wesselhoff, the president and CEO of the Park City Chamber/Bureau, is not ready to declare that tourism will see a return to pre-pandemic levels this ski season given the lingering uncertainty about how the coronavirus will affect travel — not to mention unpredictable snow conditions — but trends are pointing in the right direction.

“I’m definitely optimistic,” she said. “I think maybe cautiously optimistic is probably the best way to describe that.”

One of the factors that will ultimately determine the success of this winter is whether the international travel market, which cratered last spring, will rebound. Wesselhoff said the local tourism industry won’t be fully recovered until that happens, but the prospects remain unclear as countries around the globe continue to grapple with the pandemic.

But as Wesselhoff contemplates the upcoming ski season, she is encouraged by the performance last winter, when the pandemic conditions were much worse. International travelers weren’t coming, vaccinations weren’t widely available and coronavirus case counts in Utah and the rest of the country were skyrocketing. Visitors came to Park City nonetheless — the state set a new record with 5.3 million skier days, for instance, though occupancy numbers in town were down compared to before the pandemic — and spent enough money to keep the economy afloat even in the absence of the Sundance Film Festival.

She characterized the winter as “way better than what anyone expected.”

“We’re really, really lucky that we made it,” she said. “And we outperformed any of our guesses of how we thought we were going to perform. With that being said, we were still down like 30%, you know. … So it’s not like we’re breaking any records.”

While the Chamber/Bureau does not yet have robust data about this summer’s performance, Wesselhoff said the early returns were strong. And it’s clear to anyone who has visited Main Street during, say, the Park Silly Sunday Market or who has sat in a midsummer traffic jam that the town is packed with visitors.

Like last summer, Wesselhoff said, people have flocked to Park City for its outdoor recreation. It’s helped that Summit County has the highest vaccination rate in Utah and that COVID case counts have been relatively low even as numbers have risen elsewhere.

Those factors will hopefully also propel the tourism industry going forward as it continues to recover from the pandemic, she said.

“Park City has a lot of the attributes that people are looking for right now, as they’re thinking about how to travel safely and how to do it in a way that will keep their families safe,” she said.

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