Ice baths being good for body and clarity of mind, I have some cold water to throw. First, at this apparent notion that citizens who speak at public hearings before boards and councils express anything remotely like the people’s will, as they presume. Read the room, they say. Can you not liste n? But a council meeting like the one Thursday at the Marsac Building in Park City attracts the agitated, not some cross section of the greater community. Community surveys, open houses and councilors’ interactions outside the meetings do more to demonstrate popularity or understanding a true need. Unless supporters are drummed up — for reaction to concepts for revitalizing Main Street, say, or whether to rethink a ranked-choice vs. traditional election — these scales nearly always tip to the disaffected. Important to hear, but foolish to take as representative of some consensus out there beyond the chambers. Public comment is great for hearing a new idea, a fresh insight, giving critics their chance to be heard. But there are other, better ways to truly take a community’s temperature than counting the line at the podium, “84060” voiced like a badge of honor. Besides, speakers in these cases too seldom know much about what they are talking about and then base their arguments on stuff that’s just not … true. This is the hardest, coldest fact about a treasured part of local democracy in action. ——— The line of speakers at the Park City Council chambers on Thursday night was long, about the length of the room if you count the folks who sat until they needed to stand up. Public comment took an hour between the line in person and online.   The specific topic, a long recurring one, was the evolving plans for the five acres the city bought in 2017 for $19 million in Bonanza Park, now the true center of a municipality that has sprawled well beyond Old Town. At first the idea was for an elevated arts and culture district holding the Kimball Arts Center and a headquarters for the Sundance Institute. COVID happened in there, the estimated cost swelled to $100 million, and then no one could make up their mind just what to do. The Sundance deal never got done. Kimball leaders grew tired of waiting and took a much better, roomier deal at the Dakota-Pacific site near the art center’s namesake junction. Outreach over the years in various ways showed less interest in the arts and culture aspect and more in affordable housing mixed with restaurants and coffee shops, retail stores and such, open space and play areas and a plaza where locals would go. Which is where the city’s development partner, Brinshore Developments, has landed, also with 250-something parking spaces underground and all but one building held to three stories. Of course, it’s not good enough. These things never are. But nonetheless it’s headed to the Planning Commission to grind into the details.  ——— There were some head scratchers listening Thursday night to the stream of comments, which broke into a couple of main flows. The larger current was from people who wanted more emphasis on the arts. The other was the relatively new upspringing of argument that the five acres should only be a park. The rest I heard as largely dissatisfied noise — there should be more of that or less of this, and one observation that the corner of two of Park City’s busiest streets is, well, loud, louder than anywhere else in town. The enthusiasm expressed for another park at our busiest corner — with concerts! — hit my ear oddly. Who in a ski town is going to gravitate to a park at the busiest corner to replicate the metropolitan experience, never mind flock to a concert competing with that roar? Like there aren’t already outdoor concert venues in beautiful locations around here, more than most places? Not to mention little used parks in quiet spaces. The arts advocates overlooked a few venues, too, in their impassioned speeches read off their phones about how there isn’t enough in the way of art spaces, particularly with respect to the council chamber-sized pocket art center envisioned so far in this plan. I am still relatively recently arrived from an actual arts haven in the Sierra Nevada foothills where artists figure out how to live and support themselves on their art, some maybe with supplemental income from growing boutique pakalolo on the side. The most popular talents thrive on a lot less than is already in Park City, and the rest of the creatives get by as we do. I’ll count myself in that number, though the day job is all consuming. But seriously, we don’t have the Eccles, the Egyptian, Jim Santy, Marquis, Black Rock Event Center, the city’s plush community center under construction, fields, resort base areas as ready performance space? Doesn’t seem like the problem here is too few. The mini arts center could be a little larger or a little smaller, sure. But the main art space in the development appears to be art studios and labs and such. There’s a fair chunk of that in the design now. Will it extend what PC CREATE does with the artist community or replace it? Will this space become non-profit offices over time, or for regular businesses? That’s kind of my bet. Don’t forget the future Kimball Arts Center, beyond strict city limits but still very much in the community. ——— Several speakers pooh-poohed the need for affordable housing in Park City, saying there were plenty of projects up or underway, including at the nearby EngineHouse. In truth, they couldn’t be more wrong, as well as largely inaccurate in the numbers they were throwing out. They also undercut the biggest obstacle to Park City ever resembling anything like an arts community. The size of a bandbox at the five-acre site has precisely zero to do with it. Whether recognized or not, the defining statistic is this: 12% of the residents of Park City hold jobs in Park City. This is the root symptom to understand the commuter congestion; the cost of housing; the demographic trend toward richer, older, retired and loss of schoolchildren; the imbalance between resort and residential community. The sheer weight of short-term rentals today reflects this, too. People living in the city core aren’t going to add to the morning and evening traffic when they are already where the commuters are coming and going. Um, duh. Turning the space into a park where no one lives will not ease any congestion, either. ——— At least broadly speaking, this is the best plan that also will best connect to the 70 or so other acres of Bonanza Park in need of redeveloping an ugly hodgepodge of aging strip mall, antique hotel, and industrial uses. The cherry on top is the electrical substation next to the EngineHouse. Maybe this project will kick start at last overhauling a core part of town that has languished for even longer than the city has owned the five-acre site. Maybe some of it in time for the 2034 Olympics? The stunning actual decision of any kind here can only displease enough people to line up and wail in these chambers for untold more hours. This is inevitable no matter how a council votes. My own pet wave-a-wand idea to build a new City Hall there, closer to more residents, is the lesser good than the plan moving now to the Planning Commission, I think upon cool reflection. Nine long years into this — what dithered into a paralysis of stickers at open houses, listening maybe a little too much to protest at every idea, trying to find ways to please everyone — to take this small but key step toward solving the Bonanza Park puzzle is bigger than we may think. So good on the council deciding at last, shocking as that may be. Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745. The post Journalism Matters: The shock of a big decision appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less