What are people saying?
I support the project because I think what the council was able to negotiate is a much better agreement. I think the community benefit is much greater than the original development agreement.
I've heard many say, build what you bought. I think we should ask the developer to build better than they bought, and I think that this amended development agreement is. I think it's better than the original.
I would just encourage everyone to know before you sign and make an informed decision. The referendum certainly will impact the future of Summit County and our land use authority.
-Councilwoman Megan McKenna
(If the referendum is successful…) We would not get a new transit center, but I think more important to High Valley Transit is that we fully supported the council's vote. We thought it represented a significant step toward achieving the visionary goals outlined in the Kimball Junction Neighborhood Plan and we were excited about the positive impact that the project would have on our community and its alignment with our shared objectives for a more connected future.
We don't see any scenario in which it remains open space, and we fully believe that the community should be allowed to realize all of the benefits that the council extracted from the developer.
-Caroline Rodreguez
https://www.kpcw.org/show/local-news-hour/2025-01-22/high-valley-transit-ridership-increases-by-16
There's a tremendous amount of traffic. And I think most of you are very concerned about the traffic. We will have a transit center. We're going to have bus rapid transit. We're going to have with this proposal, a lot of parking.
I believe this is a good project.
- Chris Robinson, Dec 18th County Council Hearing
https://www.facebook.com/SummitCountyUT/videos/1546262596021547
I do not believe building what you bought is the answer.
I think it would exacerbate the congestion in the Kimball Junction area, and create unimaginable light pollution with no community benefits except for a few more high-paying jobs for people to commute to the Wasatch Front.
We desperately need affordable housing in this community. It is really heartbreaking to me that our kids are raised here and they can't afford to come back and live here. That is very unfortunate. We don't want to give up a chance for affordable housing.
-Tonja Hansen, Dec 18th County Council Hearing
https://www.facebook.com/SummitCountyUT/videos/1546262596021547
When I see social media, especially, I see a lot of incorrect information out there.
Where we're sitting today is 57% or 56.8% of this project would be affordable housing. Any other city or county would just kind of do backflips to figure out how we got to a 57% or 58% affordable ratio.
- Canice Hart, Dec 18th County Council Hearing
https://www.facebook.com/SummitCountyUT/videos/1546262596021547
We've gotten emails that have accused us of having closed-door meetings and making backroom deals. Every discussion that we've had, that this subcommittee has had, has been brought back in total to the public and revealed to the public with no secrecy. There have been no backroom deals.
We have to have a place to put vehicles so that people can get on buses. That's the challenge. If you can't get on a bus, you can't ride it. So the capture parking lot is a big get.
(Regarding workforce housing…) I think we're 500 units short. It's the last number I got and that deficit may increase over time. I think we need more. I think we need it for our firefighters, one-third of which live here. For our law enforcement officers, both sheriffs and police officers, one-third of which live here. We need it for nurses, some of whom are living in Park City Heights. We need it for teachers. We need it for county workers because we can't keep them if it's too expensive to live here and we have to provide services. So we need to build it.
- Roger Armstrong, Dec 18th County Council Hearing
https://www.facebook.com/SummitCountyUT/videos/1546262596021547
When I look at my eight-year-old son and the future that I hope for him and for his friends and for all of our children, it's a place that we can gather. It's a place where we can have community gathering spaces like Rogers Amphitheater or have libraries like the library that Canace has been fighting for since the beginning of this project, fighting for civic spaces where we can gather, that we can come together, that we can meet, that we can explore ideas, where we can civilly disagree at times because that's also a healthy part of our democracy and a healthy part of our community.
We've come together and come to a project that has many community benefits, we have multiple gathering spaces, both indoor and outdoor, that can serve our community and allow us to come together and to meet socially, to happen upon one another, we have, even within the podium and the public-private partnership, we have spaces where people can meet each other, can run into each other, can shop, can visit, kids can play in a safe manner. We have non-profit spaces, which we know within our community and we have seen at Live PC, Give PC, is a huge pillar within our community as supporting our non-profits that provide so much for the needs of so many people within our community. And that's also included in this project.
We have heard over and over again from our senior community how important that is for our seniors. We also have deeply affordable housing that's included in this project and over 50 percent of the project, including the county's portion, is affordable. That's a deed-restricted that will remain affordable.
The deeply affordable housing matters because of our high median income within this community.
We have our capture parking lot that is addressing some of our concerns with traffic that we have been working very heavily on.
As I look at this development agreement, the time and the attention that has been put into this, I can say for myself that there's been a lot of thoughtfulness, that we have listened to the community as far as what are the concerns that you want to be addressed.
- Malena Stevens, Dec 18th County Council Hearing
https://www.facebook.com/SummitCountyUT/videos/1546262596021547