The Developers have named their price for a total buyout of the Treasure Hill project planned for Creole Gulch above Old Town and Park City officials say the price is too high for taxpayers to bear, so they will no longer pursue that as an option.
For the past year and a half, city officials and the Sweeney family, the primary owners and developers of the project, have been in talks about the plans to put a large development on the hillside just northwest of the town lift. The Treasure Hill project, as it is known, has had vested rights for years and includes plans for condos, a hotel and more. One of the options officials have considered over the last 18 months, in order to avoid seeing the large project go in, was a tax-payer funded buyout of the plan. Now it looks like that option is off the table.
The Sweeney’s recently provided the city with their estimate of the project’s value and said they would be willing to sell all of their development rights for just under 93 million dollars. After a final meeting between the two parties on Wednesday the city has now announced the two are at an impasse and a full buyout will no longer be considered.
City officials had considered the buyout option after residents expressed interest in the idea but survey’s showed very limited support for a large price tag. Officials estimate the buyout would cost property owners about 78 dollars a year per 100 thousand dollars of assessed value for 15 years. A home valued at just over 7 hundred thousand would pay well over 5 hundred dollars a year. In recent surveys only 17 percent of residents said they would be willing to pay that much.
Instead, officials say they will now focus on a plan to transfer roughly half of the density off of the hillside to other areas of town. Some of it could be transferred to the base area of Park City Mountain Resort. Stay tuned to KPCW Thursday morning, we’ll be talking with Councilwoman Liza Simpson about Wednesday’s meeting and what happens now.
THINC Park City 