Park City Will Keep Sundance

The Sundance Film Festival will make an encore performance here at least through 2005.

Festival officials have agreed to a four-year contract with the city, which the City Council is expected to ratify today. The agreement ends recent worries that the 10-day January showcase for independent filmmakers might move elsewhere, possibly Salt Lake City.

Park City leaders in recent weeks cobbled together a package of incentives aimed at addressing problems Sundance has had in holding its ever-growing festival in the resort town.

The incentives include space for a Main Street technology center, VIP ski passes during the festival and up to $250,000 in cash and services to Sundance.

The festival has been a Park City fixture for the past 17 years.

“A certain ambience and joie de vivre would have disappeared if the festival would have relocated,” said City Councilman Roger Harlan.

Sundance administrators say the event brings about $36 million a year to Utah, most of it spent in the Park City area. It attracts about 13,500 out-of-state visitors and draws 7,500 more from Utah.