Tucked away in the Wasatch County Parks and Recreation building during the annual Fair Days event was an array of projects with no common denominator other than that they were made, grown or baked by hand. There were countless cakes, a crocheted, two-foot-tall dragon and a 51,300-piece puzzle laid out on several tables assembled by seniors from the Wasatch County Senior Center.

The 29-by-7 foot masterpiece took five months to assemble and depicts 27 wonders of the world, from the Statue of Liberty to the Taj Mahal. 

The puzzle is far from the only contribution the Senior Center made to the Fair Days exhibition, which showcases and judges community talent in categories ranging from horticulture to arts and crafts. In total, the county’s seniors submitted 109 exhibits, earning 16 first-place ribbons, according to Candie Bonner, activities coordinator for the Senior Center.

Heber City senior citizen Sharon Michael won a first-place ribbon in acrylic painting for her depiction of a hunched-over king vulture. 

“When you get old, you develop some things,” she said — namely, “talent.”

When Michael started painting in a course at the Senior Center last year, she whined through the entire class. She found herself apologizing to the teacher when she realized her wildlife paintings turned out surprisingly well. 

The Senior Center offers a wide array of classes — tap dance, tai chi, watercolor painting and pool, to name a few. It also organizes get-togethers at concerts, plays and restaurants. The seniors even visited Strawberry Reservoir recently to watch a fish hatchery release 10,000 trout.

“(The Senior Center does) a tremendous amount to include all the senior citizens that have varied interests,” Michael said. 

Bonner is the force behind the classes and events. A Fair Days exhibitor herself, Bonner began encouraging seniors to participate a few years ago after noticing how proud they were of what they were making in classes.

“The talent of our senior community is amazing, and sometimes, I feel like they get overlooked. So, it’s been really neat to see them come and share their talent,” she said. 

Heber City resident Nancy Geisler said the Senior Center’s handling of the submission process makes it easy to participate.

Geisler has sewn her entire life. This Fair Days, she won a first-place award for a folding screen. Inside the oak frame, she sewed an intricate pattern using white thread and a technique called net darning. 

“It’s not as tedious as cross-stitching. It’s kind of the same thing because you’re working in squares, but it goes faster,” Geisler explained.

Meanwhile, Midway senior Cheryl Long made quilts with her granddaughters, Evalyn, 7, and Teagan, 9. The girls chose fabrics patterned with ice cream cones and hummingbirds, respectively. 

“I loved it. It was tedious for them at different points,” Long joked.

For Bonner, the appeal of the Fair Days exhibits is their celebration of talents that can be considered “a forgotten art.”

“It’s just awesome to see people remembering how to preserve food, how to hand-make quilts,” she said.

Bonner’s first Fair Days exhibit was a bookmark she submitted when she was 5 years old. This year, she submitted various canned goods, from jams to chicken, and floral arrangements. 

“It’s a good place to gather, to share your talents, to have joy,” she said about the Fair Days exhibition. “(For) the senior community … to remember, ‘I have talents. I can do these things and share them with people.’”

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Plans for Park City’s new senior center continue to grow — to 13,000-15,000 square feet of interior space, which is four to five times larger than the current center’s 3,200 square feet. 

That’s all according to the latest update from Matt Lee, economic development project manager for Park City, during a meeting last week between the Park City Council and the Summit County Council. 

The current building is too small and can’t accommodate the center’s explosive membership, Lee said: 70 members in 2020, about 380 in 2022 and more than 750 as of March. Plus, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute projects that the number of people 65 and older in Summit County will increase by 42% in the next 10 years and up to 67% by 2065. 

The new building would occupy the Mawhinney lot, across Park Avenue from the Park City Library in the library’s overflow parking lot. The lot is 1.09 acres and today holds 47 parking spaces, with a little over half of the remaining lot as open space. The city would seek to retain those 47 spots, though the minimum required is 33 stalls. 

“There are 13 stalls that are identified in the library (master planned development) from the renovation of the library back in 2013,” Lee said. “There are 13 spots that are dedicated … as overflow usage for the library, so we’d have to replace those.” 

Add that to the current senior center building’s required 20 parking stalls minimum and you get the 33 required minimum, Lee said. Regardless, the current design the city is pursuing for the lot seeks to retain 47 parking spaces — 39 in one lot and eight stalls off of Sullivan Road. 

The building’s height could not exceed 27 feet, and at least 30 percent of the lot would have to be open space.

For the building itself, the current design for the interior targets 13,000 square feet with a building footprint of 7,500 square feet, which would cost about $14.4 million. The architecture firm the city is working with, Sparano + Mooney, had recommended a 15,000-square-foot design, and City Council had previously targeted a 10,000-square-foot design. After receiving feedback from seniors that 10,000 would be too small, the city has split the difference and targeted a 13,000-square-foot design. 

But depending on how funding shakes out, that square footage could still go up. The current design of the building has flexibility to expand up to the architecture firm’s original vision of a 15,000-square-foot interior and an 8,000-square-foot building footprint. That size is projected to cost about $16.6 million. City staff are still ironing out how the funding will work out, which will inform the final particulars of the design. 

In the meantime, Lee presented a working timeline: The City Council approves the schematic design in July 2026, the Planning Commission approves a conditional use permit and a master planned development by September, the city secures a general contractor by fall and starts construction in March 2027. 

The building would then open a year and a half later in fall 2028.

“That would be the goal, best-case scenario,” Lee said.

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