Turning parking lots into Dollars

The developer that plans to turn Park City Mountain parking lots into a major real estate development, scheduled its first open-house to introduce what might be one of the largest projects Park City may have to wrestle with this decade.

I attended the event on Monday night and, like everyone else, was stunned by the size of the project.

While it will consist of four main building complexes spread over what is a 1,200 car parking lots, its simple size tells me that it will add up at least one thousand pillows, not to count the personnel needed to service it, including restaurant shops and other amenities, not to mention the extra pedestrian and automobile traffic it will self-generate.

Yet, the developer seems to believe that by merely replacing the 1,200 parking spots underground and adding some 350 will suffice. Current parking is already woefully insufficient and the new real estate addition will require much more than 350 spots.

Back in 2014, Deer Valley Resort that has a similar idea of turning its parking lots into real estate, was envisioning relocating its 1,250 car spaces underground by building a total car parking garage for about 2,100 cars.

The Park City project would bring another opportunity to get rid of most of the visible skier car traffic by funneling it underground with one large entry and exit at the mouth of the complex and organizing the flow of vehicles underneath the entire complex.

I proposed the idea, but it was found to be, you guessed it, too expensive. Of course, the presentation I attended is just a proposal that will be vetted following two other open-house meetings planned for later on this month. It will then be presented to the Park City Planning Commission.

Construction time will be staggered to mitigate the impact on that sensitive area, and take 4 to 7 years. I think 10 would be a more realistic time-frame. This in the context of continued climate warming and the current stock market collapse...