Park City may revisit city land for workforce housing sites

Councilor Molly Miller reopened Park City’s most sensitive housing question Thursday, urging city leaders to look broadly at municipal land for workforce or income-restricted housing. The push landed just as the city’s Bonanza Park concept was moving through Planning Commission review, setting up another round of debate over which city-owned parcels should carry the burden of housing growth.

The immediate flashpoint is the Bonanza Park site, an approximately 5-acre city-owned parcel in the Bonanza Park and Snow Creek neighborhood off Kearns Boulevard between Bonanza Drive and Park Avenue. Park City’s materials describe the redevelopment as a mixed-use neighborhood with affordable housing, transit connectivity, underground parking, neighborhood-scale retail and cultural amenities. City RFP documents also show roughly 1 acre may be reserved for an independently financed local arts and cultural facility, a detail that adds another layer of local sensitivity beyond housing alone.

That sensitivity was on display at the Planning Commission’s July 9 hearing, where the crowd nearly filled the Marsac Building council chambers and testimony ran heavily against the proposal. Dozens of residents opposed the Bonanza Park concept, while only a handful spoke in support. A citizens group has since launched a petition asking city leaders to pause the project and reconsider the site’s future.

Miller’s idea reaches beyond Bonanza Park. She pointed to earlier city discussions that identified other possible sites, including land along Marsac Avenue south of the Marsac Building and the Mine Bench parcel. Those locations have already sparked organized neighborhood resistance, with nearby residents arguing that housing should go somewhere else. In Park City, that usually means the same fights over traffic, open space, neighborhood character and views that have defined land-use politics for years.

Mine Bench is the clearest precedent. Park City had considered the 29-acre parcel near the Ontario Mine Trailhead by Marsac Avenue and Wheaton Way for affordable housing since early 2021. In March 2024, a consultant proposed a 300-unit project with 660 beds in 10 buildings, but the City Council declined to pursue it after a contentious discussion. Public notices in 2025 then showed the city seeking to extend a conditional-use permit for employee temporary housing at 7700 Marsac Avenue to Oct. 31, 2029, keeping the land tied to housing even after the larger project stalled.

The Marsac corridor also carries historic weight. The Park City Museum says remnants of the original Marsac Mill foundation still remain near the Marsac Municipal Building, including visible stonework tied to the city’s mining past. That makes any housing review near Marsac Avenue a question of zoning and density, but also of preservation and civic identity.

The broader housing discussion is expected to return to the City Council in August, and short-term rentals may be part of it. Park City’s general plan materials have long framed Bonanza Park as a place for more affordable housing and better bike and pedestrian connections, but the latest debate suggests the harder question is whether the city is willing to place that housing on its own land, and how much opposition it is prepared to absorb if it does.