Park City reviews Marsac Avenue land for potential housing

Park City revisited Marsac Avenue land in Old Town for possible housing in a July 14 review, putting city-owned ground back into a conversation that has surfaced before without advancing. The parcel has long drawn attention because it sits inside one of the city’s most politically sensitive neighborhoods and could be one of the few places where Park City can still control housing on land it already owns.

The reason the site keeps resurfacing is practical as much as political. Park City’s housing efforts depend on finding places inside city limits where workforce and attainable homes can be added, and municipal land can reduce acquisition costs while giving the city more control over design, eligibility and long-term use. The city’s affordable housing resources say Park City works with a number of community partners that also provide housing assistance, and its for-sale housing program relies on a waitlist to allocate affordable sales units. That search carries more urgency in a market where the Park City Community Foundation says the median single-family home sells for $3.95 million.

Old Town, though, is where housing ideas run into the sharpest resistance. Residents scrutinize any proposal that could change neighborhood character, density, traffic, parking, views or the balance between preservation and redevelopment. Park City declined in March 2024 to pursue housing that would have pitted Old Town against business interests, and the city was already looking at housing concepts in the neighborhood in 2015, when it investigated putting housing atop Old Town parking lots. Those earlier ideas never moved forward, which is why the Marsac Avenue tract remains more a test case than a settled site.

The corridor also carries historic weight. Park City’s historic sites inventory lists the Marsac Elementary School at 445 Marsac Avenue, built in 1936, and the William A. Gidley House at 220 Marsac Avenue, built in 1891. That history adds another layer to any housing review, because changes on Marsac Avenue can trigger concerns not only about density and traffic but also about what the city keeps, reuses or sacrifices on public land. Park City Council has continued to wrestle with housing and property questions in other settings, including a June 27, 2024 work session on the Bonanza Park Small Area Plan, showing that Marsac is part of a broader land-use reckoning rather than an isolated parcel decision.