Over the past few months the Summit County government has spent countless hours internally working on solutions to transportation problems. They’ve spent over $100,000 on consultants who provided uninspired suggestions. They have taken input (and valuable time) from hundreds of citizens, that apparently will go almost nowhere. And they have concluded that they will have to solve the problem\u00a0themselves.<\/p>\n
We get it. Transportation problems are enemy number one in Summit County. However, does the county REALLY GET IT?<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Home Savings Bank is requesting that the Summit County Council allow them a special exception to increase the number of uses on their property (by the Blue Roof Market and Parley’s Park Elementary). Currently only\u00a0community banking services and\u00a0commercial\/business office space uses, that are \u201clow intensity traffic generators,\u201d are permitted. According to the county’s staff report, “The applicant seeks to expand the\u00a0palette of potential uses for the property.” These new uses (with permits) would include medical\/dental offices, \u00a0offices with moderate amounts of customer interaction and traffic generated, and offices with a high level of customer interaction and traffic generated. \u00a0The Summit County Planning Department\u00a0recommends that the county council approve the exception.<\/p>\n
The planning department looks at four standards\u00a0when making this recommendation:<\/p>\n
The planning department’s\u00a0conclusion is that this development meets all those standards.<\/p>\n
Yet, what about the traffic issues that have\u00a0been at the top of the agenda? The only reason to ask for this exception is to allow uses\u00a0that cause more traffic, as they can already have office space with low traffic. Each of the additional requested options would likely cause more traffic, which also happens to\u00a0be both\u00a0in a current trouble spot (Highway 224) and around a school. The reports says, “Staff does not anticipate any nonmitigatible\u00a0impacts related to traffic …” How exactly are they going to mitigate additional traffic going down 224? This traffic must\u00a0come down 224 to get there and if it is successful at all, there will be more of\u00a0it.<\/p>\n
During\u00a0the past two years, the county council approved a hotel on 224 partly because they felt it would have less traffic impacts than a restaurant and office. \u00a0Approving this (versus doing nothing) is guaranteed to be the option that can generate more traffic.<\/p>\n
So, we’re not sure how this actually isn’t detrimental to the public’s health, safety, and welfare (Standard #1, above). More cars cause more pollution (health). More cars will be driving around\u00a0a school (safety). More cars on 224 will contribute to the log jam (welfare).<\/p>\n
We also wonder if this runs counter to\u00a0General Plan Phase 2 that is likely to be approved in the coming months. A\u00a0thoughtful citizen pointed us to the proposed Synderville Basin General Plan Phase 2 (regarding another story). It says, “Policy 2.3: Do not approve any new entitlements beyond base zoning until such\u00a0time that existing entitlements are significantly exhausted.” Would this be an additional entitlement? It is an entitlement of more rights. So approving this\u00a0would probably be a good\u00a0example of what the General Plan Phase 2 appears to be trying to limit.<\/p>\n
We do understand the property owner’s desire to have more flexibility. We also understand\u00a0the argument that says that a property owner should have the right to do whatever they want\u00a0with their property. Generally, that’s a larger discussion, though. In this case, however, the current use was specifically granted in 2002. Any other use requires a change to what was granted before and the owner\u00a0 It’s our opinion that generating\u00a0more traffic, which\u00a0would be a byproduct of this request, is not in the best interests\u00a0of Summit County. Whether it puts 50\u00a0more cars on 224\u00a0in the middle of the day, 20 more cars at rush-hour (yes you\u00a0have to agree that Park City now has a “rush-hour”), or requires an additional bus to accommodate\u00a0this traffic…why approve it? It just contributes to a problem\u00a0for which we currently have very few solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the past few months the Summit County government has spent countless hours internally working on solutions to transportation problems. They’ve spent over $100,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[43,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/v2.parkrag.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u00a0knew\u00a0<\/del>should have known\u00a0<\/del>their rights when the property was built and\/or bought.<\/p>\n