The Park City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has taken on an unconventional role in combating the area’s affordable housing shortage. Rarely does the municipality itself act as the developer, but that’s just what the folks at City Hall are doing. “Overall, we’ve seen a lot of support for the city’s affordable housing efforts,” says Park City’s Housing Development Manager Jason Glidden. “Reseeding the neighborhoods with full-time residents benefits a lot of aspects of the community.”
The city completed construction on four single-family units and four townhomes with the Woodside Phase I housing project earlier this summer and received final authorization in June for another 52 affordable housing units and six market rate units with the Woodside Phase II project. It’s all part of the city’s push to deliver 800 affordable housing units by the end of 2026. To meet the ambitious goal, the city isn’t slowing development. “It’s in our best interest to investigate all the property we own and run the planning out to see what makes sense,” Glidden explains.
To that end, the Planning Commission is currently exploring additional affordable housing projects. The Homestake project is a rental property proposal behind the Boneyard that’s in conceptual design. “Park City has a huge need for affordable rentals,” Glidden says. The lucrative vacation rental market has consumed much of the long-term rental inventory needed to house seasonal workers.
The city owns two parcels at 100 Marsac, comprising 2.1 acres which they’re hoping to develop into between 15 and 20 single family homes. The property was given to Park City when the site’s previous owner, Talisker, ran into secondary access and contaminated soil issues during the Master Plan Development Process. Talisker had slated the area for the development of workforce housing but faced some local opposition, just as PCMC does today.
The Planning Commission has repeatedly heard concerns and periodically faced appeals based on traffic, parking, density and property value issues. Certainly, some of the anxieties are validly founded, but others are likely rooted in thinly-veiled NIMBYism.
Nevertheless, the people at PCMC remain optimistic and undeterred. “You’ll never get everyone to agree, but overall people seem to be behind what we’re trying to do. We work really hard to keep our developments in line with what the neighborhoods look like and the zoning dictates. Just as with Woodside Phase I, I don’t think people would even be able to identify them as affordable units.”
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