Summit County Council Reviews Junction Commons Rezone Amid Traffic, Affordability Concerns

The Summit County Council took its first substantive look this week at a proposal to rezone and redevelop the former Outlets Park City site in Kimball Junction into a 19-building mixed-use neighborhood, with traffic concerns and affordable housing conditions set by the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission still unresolved as the project advances.

Singerman Real Estate, which owns the property at 6699 N. Landmark Drive, is working with Park City architecture and design firm Elliott Workgroup to rezone the site from a town center zone to a neighborhood mixed-use zone, designated NMU-1. The plan calls for gutting much of the existing retail footprint: in the upper portion alone, about 82,000 of the existing 98,000 square feet of retail space serving roughly 70 tenants would be demolished and replaced with 391 apartments and 42 townhomes across three buildings, plus 7,300 square feet of commercial space and two parking structures. One of the three apartment buildings would include a 7,200-square-foot clubhouse. In the lower portion, where about 230,000 square feet of retail currently sits, the plan proposes a nine-building mixed-use infill project with 54,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial and 77 upper-level apartments.

Of the 433 residential units in the upper portion, 205 would be designated as affordable. The NMU-1 zone ordinarily requires half the housing in a development to be affordable, but it allows Junction Commons to build fewer affordable units if it builds them first. Priority for those 205 units would be given first to residents or workers adjacent to the development, then to those in the Kimball Junction area, then to those in the broader Snyderville Basin, and then probably to Summit County at large. A planning commission condition also requires that three of the 42 townhomes be made affordable, addressing concerns that low-income apartments would otherwise appear segregated from market-rate townhomes.

The project reached the County Council after the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission voted 6-1 on Feb. 24 to forward it with a positive recommendation. Commissioner Tim Jeffrey was the lone dissent, saying the project was "simply too big." His colleagues agreed to send it forward but attached conditions, most notably that the project's traffic mitigation planning must account for future developments by Dakota Pacific Real Estate and at Utah Olympic Park.

That condition reflects a broader concern about cumulative congestion near Interstate 80 and state Route 224. Commissioner Eric Sagerman, who voted to forward the project, made clear his support came with reservations. "Junction Commons is adjacent to another development that's having 700 or more units, in addition to the hotel that's going, or whatever occurs in the Utah Olympic Park," Sagerman said. "We're not adding one new road or looking at a traffic study that actually takes into account all of those together."

Justin Keys, an attorney for Singerman Real Estate, acknowledged the project sits in a busy area but argued its context is distinct. What makes the proposal different from the others, Keys said, is that it's a redevelopment, not new construction on undeveloped land.

The developers have also proposed punching a hole in the west-facing wall, the one bearing the mural visible from the parking area, to create a new entryway into the site.

The County Council's March 18-19 review was a first look rather than a final vote. No date has been set for the public hearing and final determination on the rezone and master plan, leaving the project's fate contingent on how the Council ultimately weighs the traffic questions that commissioners flagged but did not fully resolve.