Park City planning commission eyes late August Bonanza Park vote

Park City’s Planning Commission is lining up hearings on Bonanza Park for July 8, August 12 and August 26, with a vote possible that night or a continuation to September 9. That compressed calendar raises the stakes for the city-owned five-acre parcel at Bonanza Drive and Kearns Boulevard, where owners, renters, businesses and nearby neighbors could see either a mixed-use project move forward or the current concept stalled again.

The proposal now in play is a scaled-down version of the city’s long-running Bonanza Park effort, with affordable rental housing, art space, restaurants and about 2 acres of open space. The housing component has been described as 88 income-restricted units. Traffic and housing impacts are explicitly on the commission’s agenda, and the dispute is already organized enough to make the hearings a real test of how much support the project can keep once the public comment starts.

That pressure is landing on a site Park City bought in 2017 for about $19 million. The city first envisioned an arts-and-culture district there, with the Kimball Art Center and Sundance Institute as core tenants, but cost estimates climbed above $100 million and the city reset the project. The current debate is no longer about that original ambition. It is about whether a smaller redevelopment can survive the politics of a central parcel that has already cost the city years of planning and public patience.

The city council adopted the Bonanza Park Small Area Plan on July 11, 2024, after more than 1,500 community voices helped shape it. That plan describes a long-term vision for a more walkable, mixed-use and livable neighborhood, and Park City has tied Bonanza Park to a broader redevelopment area of roughly 200 acres in the Bonanza Park and Iron Horse district. The decision on the five-acre site will shape more than one block: it will signal how the city intends to use public land in one of its most visible corridors.

Opposition has become more organized in recent months, with residents meeting regularly to push for a park instead of development and to argue that the original vision for the land has been lost. Interest has been visible in public settings too. Almost 20 locals joined the Planning Commission’s site visit on June 25, and more than 100 people turned out at the city’s spring projects open house on June 3, where Bonanza Park drew vocal criticism. Whether the commission moves on August 26 or carries the matter into September, the next vote will determine whether the city keeps advancing mixed-use development or is forced back to the drawing board.