Hello, and welcome to Summit in Six from the Communication and Public Engagement Team at Summit County, Utah. Let’s kick things off and get caught up.
Hey everyone, so this is Derek Siddoway, the communication director with Summit County, and today I’m sitting down with our county manager, Shane Scott, to talk a little bit more about the Altus project update that we recently held a an open house or a public meeting for last week we wanted to get the word out to more people that weren’t able to attend, so we’re going to be talking a little bit about an amendment to the development agreement, which will have some exciting implications for our nonprofit community. So, to kick things off, Shane, just give us a little bit of an overview on what the meeting last Tuesday was for, and including maybe just a little bit of background on what an amendment to a development agreement is and why this was the right process for us to potentially be able to add these community benefits on the Altus project.
All right, thanks, Derek. It’s nice to be with you. I think it’s my first time on the podcast, and as an avid listener, I’m excited to be here. The development agreement amendment is simply just an amendment. I did sign a development agreement with Six Ridge Partners that are formerly Dakota Pacific Real Estate. It’s been over a year now that was signed, and the process to amend it is an administrative process, so that means that it doesn’t go back onto the county council’s desk, it just stays with the administration, and as the county manager, I get to sign both the amendment and the original development agreement. So, because it’s not a public process, in that it doesn’t land on the council agenda, we wanted to really highlight this amendment, and what it was, and so we went through that meeting that you referenced last Tuesday, I believe it was, and it was simply just an opportunity for us to involve the public to let them know what this amendment was, why I was citing it, and really to get some feedback, is this a good amendment or not. The basis of the amendment, there was a couple of little things in there that really were kind of inconsequential, and there, and there will be another amendment too. This will not be the only one that I sign, but those amendments come as we go through design processes, and we discover certain things. We’ll have to, we’ll have to tweak the development in some form or fashion, but this one, the major change is to accommodate up to 50,000 square feet of new space in this development, and that new space could accommodate is actually up to three different spaces. One would be a new building that’s up to 30,000 square feet, and this would accommodate the Kimball Arts Center. They have been quite public about their desire to move into this area, and this is just more or less a formality for them to accommodate them there. They would build a 30,000 square foot building just west of the Peak building, which is the former Skull Kenny building that the county owns. The other 210 1000 square foot spaces would be in existing buildings, so it’s there. What’s on in the what’s called the podium area, and we included a map as part of the public process there last last Tuesday, so that could be helpful to people. If they’re interested, they can go to our website and and check out the map. 10,000 square feet could accommodate a new visitor center. Existing visitor center is in Hugo Coffee, just to the south of this location, and an additional 10,000 square feet is is to allow for a nonprofit hub. One of the concerns about this situation right now is that we are, we’re making the decision to accommodate these spaces today. It’s actually at 10am this morning. After I get done with this interview, I’ll be going over there to sign that development agreement, but we’re making that decision today. But we still have a lot to decide on those 10,000 square feet spaces. When I say a nonprofit hub, that definition right now is different for everyone. Is it all nonprofits, is it one nonprofit? So, there’s still a lot of decisions to decide in the county right now. Still, even though we’re accommodating, accommodating that space, we have all of the control in what actually lands there. So I say that in really emphasizing to the public what this could be, could be a nonprofit hub, but it’s also not going to be retail, it’s not going to be housing, it’s not going to be a commercial space, it’s only for a community benefit, or it won’t be included in the project.
So, we’ve talked about this being a nonprofit hub. What are some of the kinds of organizations that have expressed interest in being part of this project and. And what is the benefit of having a nonprofit hub, kind of a central location, not only for the nonprofits in our community, but also for our residents in the community as well.
The location is great, of course. The Kimball Junction is more or less, or for all intents and purposes, the heart of the basin. This is the first exit that most people, when they’re visiting our community, take. This is how they get to Park City. It’s a very important location for us. It’s also right on the transit stop. We’re doing a new transit center in this location, so there’s a lot of things that are happening at the same time, between the housing and transit and shopping. There’s a lot of real community benefits already in this location, so the nonprofit hub idea, I’ve heard it described to me as kiln for nonprofits, so kiln is a business, as a business owner, you can—
Yeah, kind of like a co-working space for businesses where you don’t have to own the retail space for yourself or have a lease yourself, it’s kind of a shared space that multiple people can take advantage of, depending on how many hours a day or how many office spaces, exactly.
Right. So, as that is for businesses, this could be for nonprofits, sharing resources, sharing maybe staff. When we went to City Tour just this year, we were in Breckenridge, and there was a, I think it was a similar idea, it was called FERC F I R C, and it was kind of a nonprofit hub in that community, and I think there was a lot of both council members, staff, as well as members of the leadership class that really got excited about this and bringing this back to our community, between that being well timed in that visit and this amendment being requested by the nonprofit leaders in our community, this is a real opportunity for us to accommodate this space in this location.
Maybe another good way to put it is looking specifically at transit or transportation, is it can be a one stop shop for services for people, whether they’re riding the bus there or they’re driving their car there. They can come to one place, kind of walk around and hit several different things at once. We all know how annoying it is when you drive to one store and then you drive 10 minutes to another store and somewhere else to another store. So this kind of provides a one stop shop for people who may be taking advantage of these nonprofit services, but also just some of the civic services that will be in the area.
Absolutely, and and retail, and the walking around is really a key part of this this development in this area, and we’d love to get people out of their cars as much as possible, and and we’ll have, of course, almost a 1200 lot parking garage that will accommodate cars for anyone that wants to get out and visit the Kimball Art Center. We hope to have some civic spaces there that are really exciting. The library, not least of which is the library, so the really exciting opportunities for us.
So, why wasn’t this nonprofit space in the original plan for the area? Or why does the county have involvement not only with the amendment agreement, but also control over what goes into this additional space?
Well, I just think it’s the nature of the public-private partnership is that we work together. It’s not just us at the Summit County and Six Ridge Partners, but it’s also High Valley Transit. They are a partner of this in this agreement as well. It’s between the three of us that we make all the decisions, and we’re teaming up together on the development on the consulting from the construction consults to the to the architects. We’re teaming up together on all those consultants, so we get to have that say. And when the development first came to us, they asked for a certain amount of square footage, and we accommodated that square footage over time. We negotiated what that was. This is just a renegotiation of that square footage to accommodate these, these different what we’re considering community benefits.
And I think it’s important to note that the Kimball Art Center would be a new building, but aside from that, a space we’re talking about is adding additional space in commercial space that exists, so one way you put it recently was that you know it’s the difference in you probably can’t tell the difference in a 60 to 70,000 square foot building, it’s adding on a few more rooms, potentially kind of another area there, it’s not like we’re adding another floor on top of something or putting another building outside of the existing footprint.
That’s exactly right. This, this is just accommodating additional space in already existing buildings.
And one thing I want to go back to, the meeting last Tuesday, there was about 30, probably 40 to 50 people that attended there. What were some of the things that you heard from the community members at that meeting last week?
I think it was a really good opportunity to answer questions. Not only do we get our message out of what this development agreement amendment is, what we’re trying to do in this, in this space, but I also was able to talk a little bit about other exciting happenings in the area, between what we’re doing on the Peak Center, we were redoing the entire four. First floor to accommodate the library and the DMV. We talked about bus rapid transit and what’s happening with BRT High Valley Transits project there on 240 on 224 and just was another opportunity to talk about what this development is. What is Six Ridge doing here? How much housing is going in here? What’s the transit center look like, and having that map, I think, was real helpful for people. It generated a lot of questions, and we had, we had individuals from Six Ridge, from the Park City Chamber, from some of our nonprofits, and even the Kimball Arts Center there to answer questions for anybody who had them. And I think it was real, real good opportunity for people to just even just get a general update on on timing. Other than that, I only heard positive feedback. I received a lot of letters from the nonprofit community about what an exciting opportunity this nonprofit hub might be, and I think I had maybe 15 individuals send me, send me letters or sign letters that were supportive of this development agreement amendment.
So talking next steps. So we’ve teased an event we have coming up on September 12 a little bit, maybe just give people a little bit of an overview of what to expect there. There’s a couple different things going on at that, that’s really going to be the next big public event, or guess you could say kick off or unveiling.
I think it will be somewhat similar in what we did last Tuesday, in that it will be very informational. We hope to have similar partners there to explain what their role in this public-private partnership is. It will be a lot more casual, it will be during the day. We do hope to have food trucks and other other kind of amenities that would bring the public out, but I think it’ll be, I think we’ll also know a lot more about details, details around what does the development look like, what are some schematics that we can show that show what actually housing might look like. So I think we’re going to make a lot more decisions between now and then, and I think also with this community, with these community spaces, what does a nonprofit hub look like, and who’s involved? Is it again, is it all nonprofits? Is it one nonprofit? I think we’ll have some of those decisions made by September 12, and we can bring those back to the public for comments, and again to answer questions, but I’m really excited about September 12. I think it’ll be really not only informational, but a lot of fun too.
If anyone listening to this is looking for more information and wants to stay up to date on the latest of what’s going on in the Kimball Junction redevelopment area, go to summitcounty.info/kjupdates and that’s going to take you to the project page, where you can also sign up for email notifications to be aware of all the different steps and the timelines and things that we have coming up as work gets underway, not only with the Altus project, but with some of the other projects as well. Thanks, Shane.
Thanks, Derek. Thanks for having me. Bye.
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