Never Mind Olympics; Park City Already Full
Along with the natural splendor that surrounds Utah’s best-known ski town, something man made will greet spectators at next month’s Winter Olympics: sprawl.
Until recently, farmland ringed this quirky 19th century mining center. Now, tract housing hugs six miles of highway leading to Park City. Million-dollar homes creep up the bold Wasatch Mountains. Cranes and bulldozers clog the streets of Old Town, the heart of Park City. The pace is so dizzying that in one short decade, the population of Park City and the county around it has nearly doubled, making this the fastest growing part of Utah--and one of the most rapidly growing places in the U.S.
The almost 100% leap in Summit County’s population points to Park City’s appeal--and to the fact that this area stands out as a proud and raucous anomaly in a stern and strait-laced state.
Sports and partying make Park City a place where people move to have fun at more than 100 bars and restaurants within a 20-block area.Long ago, the Mormons dubbed the town “Sin City.”
Even the way this area has expanded--not through birth rate but because so many out-of-staters sought its laid-back image--puts it at odds with the rest of Utah. As host to nearly half of the events at the XIX Winter Games, Park City hopes to show the world just how separate it is from a state known primarily as the home of the Mormon Church.
Many Come From Southern California
The meteoric growth has brought new sophistication, new attitudes and new money--much of it from a stampede of Southern Californians. Some of these non-Mormon transplants liken their adopted home to the Hong Kong of Utah: an island of sorts at odds culturally, religiously and politically from the state around it.
“The truth is,” said city planner Myles Rademan, “we have never been as allied with Utah as we are with Southern California.”
All the expansion has infused the local economy, creating a 72% increase in jobs in 10 years. Manufacturing jobs alone doubled. Construction work went up 300%. The surge in service industry jobs boosted the Latino population by 638%.
With so many wealthy people moving in, the mean income in Summit County (where Park City is by far the largest town) jumped to $42,000--against $29,000 in the rest of Utah. Summit County’s population also is the state’s most highly educated.
Traffic jams on the narrow, winding roads and a pushy metropolitan mentality among many newcomers troubles some longtime residents.
“Ten years ago was where I wish Park City had stopped,” said Karri Hays, a 40-year-old ski racer who has lived here most of her life. “It was perfect. You could still go down to the post office and know everyone.”
But others said the torrent of newcomers helped preserve the town’s status as a rebel colony--a small oasis of dynamism and diversity in an otherwise conservative state so homogeneous that it’s 90% white and 70% Mormon. Lisa Cilva Ward, an ex-Californian who is co-editor of Park City magazine, said that instead of discussing whether to install new traffic lights, “you hear conversations like ‘how do we broaden as a community?’ ”
Some broadening of a different sort clearly is in progress as development booms in an unincorporated area adjacent to Park City called Snyderville Basin. Although not within town limits, condominiums and “starter castles” alike in this basin enjoy a Park City postal address--giving them cachet along with strong property values.
The real Park City is small--just 7,400 year-round residents. Its civic anchor, Old Town, boasts a village quality. The two-story wooden houses look small. Inside, many have been elaborately redone, a reflection of just how chic the neighborhood has become.
Sybaritic pursuits abound. Listings for sports clubs and spas take up several pages in the local phone book. A chairlift for the Park City ski resort runs to the foot of Main Street.
But the rustic charm of Main Street, Old Town’s major artery, is fading as New Age shops and funky stores are pushed out in favor of fur salons, real estate offices and pricey boutiques.
The biggest consequence of Park City’s evolution, residents say, is that neighbors no longer know neighbors. Dell Fuller, an airline pilot who moved here 21 years ago from Los Angeles, said so many new people are moving in that these days, “almost nobody in Park City is from Park City.”
Stirrings of change began in the late 1970s, when Salt Lake City developed as an aviation hub. Just 36 miles from the Salt Lake airport, Park City attracted so many airline staffers that the town came to be called a Delta ghetto. High-tech entrepreneurs chose Park City’s emphasis on recreation over Salt Lake City’s focus on religion. Ski bums just came for the snow.
One of them, Robert Redford, set up shop nearby in an area he named Sundance. Thousands of celebrities and film industry pilgrims annually converge on Park City for a festival started by Redford that brings the area millions of dollars in income and publicity.
Transition to a Year-Round Resort
A Park City adage is that people come for the winter but stay for the summer. The lure of year-round recreation has bolstered the town’s resort economy. Seasonal work--including a plethora of sports medicine clinics that cater to injured athletes--now continues after the snow melts. Small businesses are multiplying simply because the owners like the lifestyle.
“If the whole world found out how really cool this place is, they’d all come,” Fuller said.
Census figures suggest that may be what is happening. Yet while conceding that almost 100% growth in 10 years is “tough to swallow,” Rademan--public affairs director of the Park City Municipal Corp., one of the town’s governing boards--cautioned that even against Utah’s population of just 2.2 million, some perspective is in order.
“The truth is that in Summit County we went from 15,000 to 30,000. That’s half a block in L.A.”
No one keeps precise tabs on how many Southern Californians have fled here. But Realtors and movers say the majority of out-of-state buyers come from California--mainly Los Angeles and San Diego, each a little more than a one-hour flight away.
“Southern California is our major market, no doubt about it,” said Steve Chin, a Realtor here who bolted from Los Angeles in 1974. The biggest draw is quality of life: “It’s safe, it’s clean, there’s a strong work ethic, low crime, no earthquakes and almost no drugs.”
John Desha moved his family 10 years ago from Rancho Santa Fe to Park City. They’d planned to stay for one winter so Desha’s two children could learn to ski. Now the children are students at the University of Utah and Desha is a Summit County developer. Once a month, he flies to San Diego, where he still does some business.
“You want to talk about change, take a look at north San Diego County,” Desha said. “When I come back here, I think, ‘Whoa, I’m back in the country,’ even though I’m behind 30 cars at a stoplight.”
Soon, ground will be broken on Flagstaff, a development that will add more than 1,400 luxury residences near Deer Valley, Park City’s most exclusive address. Still more monster houses are under construction at the Colony, near the Canyons ski resort. One home in that gated enclave measures 35,000 square feet.
Many of the big, showy homes at Deer Valley and elsewhere in Park City will be rented during the Olympics, with corporations or affluent individuals paying steep fees. An average home in Park City costs $500,000, but the most extravagant residences can run from $8 million to $10 million.
County Commissioner Pat Cone said the money these new home buyers bring to the area is creating a gap between Park City and the villages around Summit County.
“Our county’s annual budget is $30 million, and there are individuals in Park City who make more than that,” he said.
The frantic pace of expansion also makes some people uneasy.
“We all came here as renegades,” said Frank Normile, an attorney who left Los Angeles in 1994. “We identified with Butch Cassidy and the little hole in the wall, and we found it. Then the whole world came in.”
In an area once made rich by silver, all the development has been a gold mine. Primary residences here are taxed on 55% of their property value. But Rademan said up to two-thirds of Park City’s dwellings are second homes, whose owners are taxed on 100% of their property’s value.
County commissioner Cone said some longtime residents are so upset about the breakneck rate of development that they vote for regressive candidates, hoping that will keep the growth at bay.
To Hays, who helped found a group here called Citizens Allied for Responsible Growth, the implications of widening income discrepancies are most disturbing of all. But she said crowded streets and traffic jams are pretty awful too. “It’s insane,” Hays said. “We’ve gotten so big and so busy, it’s ridiculous.”
A new report from the governor’s office projects that in the next 10 years, growth in Summit County will slow to a mere 60%.
Yet Fuller, for one, said it would take one of the many bulldozers digging house foundations to move him out of his adopted home.
“I do more cultural things here than in all the years I lived in Los Angeles,” he said. He gazed out at blue skies over the mountains cradling Park City, peaks dusted with a fresh coat of powdered-sugar snow.
“It sounds corny,” Fuller said, “but it feels so good just to get up here and go outside.”