Park City intends to acquire a condominium building that is under construction in Prospector, another aggressive move by the municipal government as it pursues an ambitious housing program amid continuing concerns about affordability in the city.

The Park City Council on Thursday is scheduled to cast a vote on an agreement to purchase the project, 1893 Prospector Ave., from a firm called Mr. Peabody, LLC. The price is $4,328,000. The project entails 11 condominiums. City Hall wants to acquire the building and then sell the units as restricted work force or otherwise affordable housing. The deal was negotiated in closed-door sessions, which is allowed under state law, and made public on Monday as part of the agenda for the Thursday meeting.

The project involves 10 two-bedroom units and one studio ranging in size from 500 square feet to 1,050 square feet. There are also storage lockers for each of the units. A City Hall report drafted in anticipation of the meeting on Thursday indicates the construction is expected to be completed in October.

Anne Laurent, the community development director for Park City, said the municipal government intends to close on the deal once the project receives a certificate of occupancy, a City Hall-issued document that allows people to move into a new building. The developer will complete the construction without assistance from City Hall.

Laurent said Mr. Peabody, LLC was pursuing a market-rate project. The developer approached City Hall about an acquisition, she said, describing Mr. Peabody, LLC as having a “social-conscious desire.”

“Certainly it was a shovel-ready project,” Laurent said, adding, “It was a great opportunity to add to the affordable-housing inventory . . . It was the right price and the right timing.”

City Hall anticipates selling the units once the acquisition is finalized. The prices are not set but will be set below market rate. Laurent said City Hall will recoup much of the price of the acquisition through the sales. She said a taxpayer subsidy of between 20 percent and 30 percent is expected, however. The subsidy percentage would be similar to other municipal housing projects, she said.

Laurent said City Hall staffers in the summer will discuss prices with Mayor Jack Thomas and the City Council. The prices will be based on a formula that relies heavily on area median incomes. Laurent said officials will likely begin accepting applications from potential buyers in the summer.

The project, known as the Central Park Condos, is located in the heavily developed Prospector district and steps from the Rail Trail. There was not heavy resistance as the project won the necessary City Hall permits for development. It offers a location close to numerous employers, easy access to bus routes and the shopping and dining of Prospector.

Ehlias Louis, a representative of Mr. Peabody, LLC, on Tuesday declined to discuss the specifics of the agreement, saying he planned to delay detailed comments until after the City Council meeting. He said the firm is “excited to work with the city.”

Housing is a priority at City Hall as officials continue to be concerned that Park City’s resort-driven real estate market has forced out many rank-and-file workers. Leaders say providing work force or otherwise affordable housing offers benefits like cutting commuter traffic and ensuring socioeconomic diversity. City Hall is developing a housing project along Park Avenue and intends to pursue projects on other land owned by the municipality.

The City Council meeting starts at 6 p.m. at the Marsac Building. A hearing is planned prior to the vote.

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The March for Science is planned on April 22. City Hall in a recent report previewing the special-events calendar for Park City included an entry showing the March for Science. The recent report said attendance could run from between 500 and 9,000 people.

The high-end number of 9,000 would put the March for Science in the range of the Women’s March on Main during the Sundance Film Festival in January. The January event, which involved a march on Main Street and a rally in the flagpole parking lot on lower Swede Alley, was, by a wide margin, the largest demonstration in Park City’s modern era.

The March for Science is planned as a “celebration of passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community,” the recent City Hall report says.

One of the figures involved in the March for Science organizing said details are still under consideration. Daniel Syroid, who lives in the Snyderville Basin neighborhood of Timberline and is a retired electrical engineer, said organizers plan to submit a revised application for the March for Science this week. The lead organizer, Josh Hobson, said the route is designed to start at the Brew Pub lot toward the southern end of Main Street, follow Main Street north to Heber Avenue, turn east on Heber Avenue to the flagpole lot on lower Swede Alley. It would be the same route as the Women’s March on Main.

“We need to respect science to direct our public policy,” Syroid said, noting issues like coral dying as a result of increased acid levels in the oceans as well as the melting of glaciers.

He said Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, and other Trump appointees are worrisome to the scientific community. Pruitt is “basically a climate denier,” Syroid said.

He also mentioned concern about global temperatures increasing and sea levels rising, two related issued that are rallying cries of the environmental movement. He said there is a danger there will be large numbers of refugees as the climate changes.

“Our world is going to be much less habitable for humanity,” Syroid said.

He said, though, the event is not planned as a protest and it is designed to be nonpartisan. Syroid said the marchers will support the idea that science should be the “basis of public policy.”

The City Hall report says the March for Science will require approval by the Park City Council. It also says it will be a challenge for staffers to craft plans to lessen the impact of the March for Science in the little more than a month before the event is scheduled.

The March for Science would follow three months after the Women’s March on Main and, although not designed to be partisan, it could continue the local resistance to the Trump administration. The Women’s March on Main was also not planned as a partisan demonstration, but the crowd was heavily weighted toward Trump critics as many at the event mocked the Republican president-elect on the day before he took the oath of office.

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City Hall, festival organizers and a diverse set of Parkites are engaged in talks about measures that could be taken to lessen the impact of Sundance on the community. Sundance for years has attracted large crowds and created bad traffic, but the concerns seemed more pronounced at the end of the 2017 edition than after other festivals.

Mayor Jack Thomas and the Park City Council last week held an initial discussion and will return to the topics at a meeting on Thursday. The meeting is scheduled to start at 4:15 p.m. in the City Council chambers at the Marsac Building. The discussion about Sundance is slated to begin at 5 p.m. A hearing is not planned, but the mayor typically allows public input anyway.

The elected officials on Thursday could delve further into an idea to restrict traffic in Old Town during Sundance through an access-pass system that could be similar in nature to the one that has been used for years during the summertime Park City Kimball Arts Festival. An access-pass system would be one of the most noteworthy changes to City Hall’s operations during Sundance in years. The elected officials, it appears, will stretch the discussions into the spring and early summer.

During the meeting last week, Cindy Matsumoto, a member of the City Council, said it is time to “shut down” neighborhoods to traffic during Sundance. She did not provide details but indicated there is impact on neighborhoods and a parking plan is also needed for residential areas.

The City Council also heard concerns from several businesses and people who live in Park City. Mellie Owen, who lives in Old Town, described concerns about safety as she talked about traffic. She said she is “very nervous” about children who live in Old Town, telling the elected officials drivers for ride-sharing companies use residential streets like Norfolk Avenue instead of Park Avenue.

“I’m very nervous,” Owen said.

Others spoke to the elected officials about the Festival Village, a Sundance sponsor setup that occupied lower Main Street. The Festival Village required a traffic closure along lower Main Street. Michael Barille, the executive director of the Historic Park City Alliance business group, said sales were down on lower Main Street. The sponsor setup was a “learning experience,” he said, adding that more outreach is needed as plans are crafted for future festivals.

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Park City in coming weeks will continue discussions about building a plaza toward the southern end of Main Street, a project that businesses along the shopping, dining and entertainment strip desire and an idea that has won support at City Hall but must still secure a final go-ahead.

Main Street sees a plaza as an important part of a package of streetscape improvements meant to ensure the business district remains competitive against outlying commercial centers. The plaza will be one of the most ambitious projects City Hall has pursued along Main Street.

The plaza is designed for the Brew Pub parking lot, which is on the east side of Main Street and borders Swede Alley. Park City leaders earlier identified the parking lot as the potential location of a plaza.

The Park City Council is tentatively scheduled to address the issue at a meeting on March 30. The plaza, though, is expected to be one of the highlights at an open house that is planned on Wednesday. City Hall staffers at the open house will outline the municipal work plan for 2017, covering numerous projects and programs. The open house is scheduled from 5 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. on the third floor of the Park City Library.

City Hall could start work on the plaza in the fall of 2017 or the spring of 2018. If the work starts in the fall of 2017, it could continue through the winter or be halted for the ski season and then restarted in the spring. Park City anticipates the work will cost $7 million and last eight or nine months.

The project involves greenspace, restrooms, a play area for kids, a covered pavilion and a water feature designed to resemble a brook. A 38-space garage will be built underneath the plaza. The garage will replace some of the 50 parking spaces that will be lost at the Brew Pub lot is redeveloped into the plaza. The designs also call for a bypass road linking Main Street and Swede Alley. City Hall says the bypass road is anticipated to be closed to traffic at most times but opened during events to ease traffic flow.

The open house on Wednesday, meanwhile, will also offer an opportunity to learn about City Hall’s development plans along the lower Park Avenue corridor. Officials are pursuing an aggressive plan to build work force or otherwise restricted housing on municipal parcels on or close to lower Park Avenue.

Some of the other projects expected to be covered at the open house include:

• the bus system
• plans for public art
• City Hall’s environmental programs
• plans for recreation facilities
• special events
• roadwork planned on Lowell Avenue and in ProspectorCity Hall sees the open house, which is similar to those in past years, as an opportunity for Park City residents and others to learn about a broad work plan at a single event rather than needing to attend a series of gathering about individual projects. Municipal staffers and City Hall-hired consultants will be available to answer questions.

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A set of high-level Park City officials traveled to Denver this week for a climate conference organized by a group led by Al Gore, the former vice president and one of the nation’s most prominent environmental activists.

The Park City delegation is participating in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps, a program of the Climate Reality Project. The event opened on Thursday and is scheduled to end on Saturday. Mayor Jack Thomas and three members of the Park City Council – Andy Beerman, Becca Gerber and Nann Worel – are part of the Park City delegation. Park City Manager Diane Foster and two staffers assigned to City Hall’s sustainability programs also traveled to Denver.

The Climate Reality Leadership Corps is designed to cover a broad range of topics related to environmental and sustainability issues, a priority at City Hall. A roster of speakers is scheduled to address topics like energy and land policies in the Western U.S. Gore is scheduled as one of the speakers.

City Hall said there is no charge to attend the conference. The elected officials funded their own trips while City Hall paid for the staffers to travel. The projected cost for the flights and hotels was not immediately available. A Summit County sustainability staffer was scheduled to attend in a nonofficial capacity at their own expense.

The conference materials indicated City Hall’s environmental sustainability manager, Luke Cartin, was scheduled as one of the speakers. He is a pivotal figure in the municipal government’s environmental efforts and has praised Gore before. Another person with Park City ties, Ski Butlers founder and environmental activist Bryn Carey, was also listed as a speaker at the conference.

The materials also outlined that the conference would review actions taken by the administration of President Trump or Congress targeting climate laws or regulations. The conference “will outline how we could respond powerfully and effectively to any such measures and how we can act for maximum impact,” the materials said.

Beerman said on Friday morning the Park City officials were in the audience when Gore addressed the conference. They briefly met the former vice president at a reception as well, he said.

“I think it just reinforces the urgency. We are facing a global crisis,” Beerman said about Gore’s remarks.

The City Hall participation in the Climate Reality Leadership Corps follows in the months after Park City leaders aligned themselves with the Climate Reality Project and a program under its umbrella known as the I Am Pro Snow campaign. The I Am Pro Snow program aims to protect winters from a warming climate. There is concern in Park City that a warming climate could someday threaten the ski industry that drives the local economy.

Park City has pursued an aggressive environmental agenda in recent years, starting in earnest during the administration of former Mayor Dana Williams and continuing under the current mayor. It has centered on clean-burning energies, reducing emissions and a variety of other measures.

Park City leaders have set net-zero carbon emissions goals for municipal functions by 2022 and citywide by 2032. Net zero typically involves reducing the use of energies that create emissions and offsets of some sort for the remaining emissions. It does not call for the elimination of emissions, though. Officials are pursuing a wide range of programs and policies as they attempt to reach the 2022 and 2032 goals.

Gore has longtime ties to Park City and has made several visits to the community since he left office in 2001. He debuted the environmental documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006 and the follow-up documentary, called “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” premiered at Sundance in January.

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People who live in Old Town days ahead of time anticipate the crush of vehicles that arrives in the neighborhood during the jammed opening weekend of the Sundance Film Festival.

Main Street and the narrow nearby streets are typically overwhelmed by traffic on the first Thursday of the festival without much of a letup through the first Sunday. The traffic is bad through the rest of the 11-day event, but the opening days are especially difficult in the neighborhood.

Shortly after the festival ended in January, a member of the Park City Council broached the idea of introducing restrictions on traffic in Old Town during Sundance. Andy Beerman, who lives and works in the neighborhood, did not provide details during a recent City Council meeting, but there appeared to be interest by the other elected officials to hold a more detailed discussion later.

In his comments, Beerman mentioned the traffic restrictions that have long been part of the traffic, transportation and parking plan of the annual summertime Park City Kimball Arts Festival. The arts festival, which draws tens of thousands of people to Main Street, is one of the important weekends on Park City’s busy events calendar. Main Street is closed to traffic for the weekend of arts festival.

City Hall relies on an access-pass system during arts festival that greatly limits traffic in the southern reaches of Old Town. Someone must live in the neighborhood to be granted an access pass with consideration also given to businesses there to ensure operations are not disrupted by traffic restrictions. The access-pass system for Old Town residents, though, appears to be the most important aspect of the arts festival program as talks loom about Sundance.

Traffic during the arts festival in the parts of Old Town regulated by access passes usually flows well as compared to the backups seen during Sundance, including the recently wrapped edition. Drivers with access passes during the arts festival present them at one of the checkpoints and are allowed to drive into the neighborhood. Drivers without them are turned away.

The congestion in Old Town during Sundance can be nightmarish at some points as film lovers, celebrity gawkers and people who live in the neighborhood cram onto the narrow roads. The traffic stretches throughout the neighborhood. The route toward Main Street on Park Avenue, Deer Valley Drive and the tiny Hillside Avenue are regularly backed up while drivers comb other streets for places to park even though those spots are generally within City Hall’s resident-only zones. Drivers for transportation companies, meanwhile, were repeatedly seen parked at the trolley turnaround at the intersection of Main Street, Hillside Avenue and Daly Avenue during the festival in January.

Any upcoming discussions about introducing an access-pass system will almost certainly be closely watched by Old Town residents, businesses along Main Street, the transportation firms and Sundance itself. A system would appear to have implications on a broad range of vehicles entering Old Town, including taxis, shuttles, official Sundance cars, corporate shuttles and those bringing celebrity entourages to Main Street.

It would be one of the most noteworthy logistical changes to City Hall’s Sundance plans in years. It was unclear whether the elected officials will discuss an access-pass system that would cover the entire festival or only the opening days.

A timeline for the discussions was not set at the recent meeting. City Hall and Sundance organizers typically review the mechanics of the festival annually before making alterations to the overall plan. Sometimes the alterations are not finalized until late in the year, but introducing an access-pass system would likely be researched and discussed earlier than other changes typically are since the implications on the overall logistics would be broad.

It was the second consecutive year Beerman mentioned the possibility of an access-pass system during Sundance. He spoke about the topic shortly after Sundance in 2016 as well, but the possibility did not gain momentum.

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A Park City Streets Department crew, just two people, on Thursday was dispatched to Snow Creek Drive with a cold mix of gravel and asphalt designed to be used in the winter.

Kurt Thomas and Luis Solano found a pothole that needed to be addressed and went to work. They cleaned out the pothole, used a torch to heat it up and then poured the sticky cold mix in. They used a compacting machine to ensure the mix filled the pothole and was left level with the road. The operation lasted a matter of minutes, and it was off to the next pothole.

One of the results of the pummeling snowstorms earlier in the winter is the high number of potholes that have appeared on Park City roads. The potholes started to appear in recent weeks, as Streets Department and other municipal departments were jammed with snow-removal tasks and assignments during the busy Sundance Film Festival.

In some places, the potholes create a mildly bumpy ride for drivers. Driving over potholes in other places, though, offers a brief but dramatic dip.

Troy Dayley, the streets manager for City Hall, said three locations across Park City appear to be in the worst condition. A stretch of Main Street toward the southern end of the street – between the intersections with Swede Alley and 4th Street – is one of them. The others are the section of Park Avenue between 10th Street and 12th Street and Bonanza Drive. Each of the three locations is heavily traveled, meaning that numerous drivers in Park City would have experienced the potholes in at least one of the locations in the week since the end of the Sundance Film Festival.

“It’s part of the climate we live in. It’s not negligence,” Dayley said, noting it has been years since there was a pothole problem on Main Street and it is unclear why the issues appeared this winter.

Dayley described the recent weather pattern as the cause of the overall increase in the number of potholes. During snowstorms, the water from the melting snow seeps into the road asphalt. The water eventually freezes underneath the road. As it freezes, the ice expands. The road then “pops,” he said, creating the pothole.

“The more moisture, the more possibility you have,” Dayley said.

He said the potholes began to appear in larger numbers in the middle of January. Some have already been addressed with the sticky cold mix several times. Dayley said there are approximately 100 potholes on Park City roads that have been treated with the cold mix. It takes two workers between 15 and 20 minutes to fill a pothole, he said. The largest of the potholes, Dayley said, have measured approximately 10 square feet. Most of them have been, at worst, two inches deep.

Dayley acknowledged department workers are continuing hauling operations to remove snow from tightly packed streets. The hauling operations require resources that otherwise could be shifted toward the potholes.

He said a driver attempting to avoid a pothole can cause an accident.

“The biggest danger of potholes is someone swerving to miss one,” he said, adding, “That’s the greater hazard than the pothole itself.”

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Leadership 101 is designed for people who want to learn about a broad range of issues in a condensed format. Three organizations – Leadership Park City, the Park City Chamber/Bureau and the Park City Community Foundation – present Leadership 101. The program marks 20 years in 2017.

Leadership 101 involves a lineup of speakers from the public and not-for-profit sectors, including a series of City Hall officials. The mayor of Park City typically delivers a de facto state of the city address annually during Leadership 101. Mayor Jack Thomas is scheduled to speak for 20 minutes early in the event. Diane Foster, the Park City manager, is also slated to talk to the crowd. The Park City School District will present as will officials from the County Courthouse.

City Hall managers will provide comments as well. A combined 45 minutes are set aside for Anne Laurent, the community development director, sustainability manager Luke Cartin and Alfred Knotts, who is the transportation manager. Police Chief Wade Carpenter and Sheriff Justin Martinez will also speak. Other presenters will discuss tourism and the legacy from the 2002 Winter Olympics. A panel of figures from not-for-profit organizations will talk for 30 minutes.

Leadership 101 is scheduled from 8:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Park City – The Yarrow. There is a $35 registration fee with lunch and breaks included in the price.

More information and registration is available on the City Hall website, http://www.parkcity.org. Select ‘Leadership 101’ on the front page of the website. The direct link is: http://www.parkcity.org/departments/leadership-park-city. More information is also available by contacting Karen Anderson at City Hall, 615-5186 or karen.anderson@parkcity.org.

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In this week’s collection of portraits from For The Record, we asked people at Atticus Coffee, Books & Tea and City Hall how they felt about the city’s decision to purchase Bonanza Flats. (Tanzi Propst/Park Record)

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