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Park City

Museum Wants 50 Years of Skiing Memories

imagesIn December, 1963, Park City Mountain Resort opened for skiing as Treasure Mountains Resort.  Since this year marks the resort’s 50-year anniversary, the Park City Museum will open an original exhibit, “50 Years of Park City Skiing” in November.

To find items and collect oral history stories about locals and visitors’ experiences at the resort over the past half-decade, the museum, 528 Main St., is hosting a night of show and tell on Thursday, April 25, from 5 p.m. until 7 p.m.  During the free and casual event, the museum’s staff will get ideas of what to display, said Jenette Purdy, the museum’s director of education.

“We thought it would be a fun event one night where people brought the things they have collected over the years while skiing at PCMR and share them with each other,” Purdy told The Park Record. “The museum, of course, loves objects and artifacts, but we also love stories. They sometimes make things more interesting, and it’s fun to hear about how things were.”

The museum will set up tables where people can lay out their items.  “They’ll be able talk with each other about where the items came from, and tell their stories,” Purdy said. “We will record some of the stories if people will allow us.”

The museum hopes the winter exhibit will include an interactive display where museum visitors will be able to climb into a gondola and hear these stories.  “We may have to rerecord the stories at a later date, because I’m sure Thursday will be noisy with all the other people who will be in attendance, but we want to get some of that history down,” she said. West Office Exhibition Design, which built the museum’s permanent display, will design “50 Year of Park City Skiing,” Purdy said.

“Right now, we don’t have any set plan to have specific stories and items, but we want to have fun memories we can show,” she said. “As for the objects, we just want to see what people have and then we’ll go from there.”

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Park City Construction Numbers Rise from 2012 Tally

imagesThe Park City construction industry enjoyed a solid month in March, outpacing the figures from February and the previous March, the Park City Building Department said.  According to the department, 62 permits were issued worth a little more than $4.1 million combined. The dollar figure climbed sharply from the little less than $1.2 million in permits issued in February and the just more than $1.3 million tallied in the previous March.  Through the end of March, the year-to-date total reached to nearly $6 million, up from the $4.9 million through the same period in 2012.

The March numbers are likely encouraging since it is a month when construction crews often seek the permits they need to break ground later in the spring or the early summer. The 2013 dollar figure was roughly triple those from March 2012.  The department in March issued one permit for a duplex, valued at a little less than $1.1 million, and one permit for a three-unit multifamily building. The building is valued at $998,271.84.  Alterations and additions, though, continued to push up the figures. The Building Department said it issued 45 permits for alterations and additions, valued at a just more than $2 million combined. Most of the permits, as well as the dollar value, were generated from residential properties. Alterations and additions have had an outsized impact on the numbers since the recession as owners chose to work on their existing properties instead of building new ones. Those sorts of permits, though, are typically not as valuable as ones issued for new projects.

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City Hall May Sack the Use of Plastic Bags in Park City

imagesMike Holm would be one of the Park City businesspeople most impacted should City Hall institute a ban on plastic bags.  The owner of The Market at Park City said in an interview this week a ban would add expenses to his operations, annoy some customers and not accomplish much for the environment. He is unsure whether he would support or oppose such a ban but said he would back the decision the local government makes.

The Market at Park City is almost certainly one of the top users of plastic bags in Park City, and his comments come as City Hall and the not-for-profit Recycle Utah continue to consider ideas. A law has not been proposed, but it seems that one could be crafted in the coming months. Holm said the grocery store uses both paper and plastic bags. Plastic bags are far more popular with customers, he said, describing them as easier to handle when they are full of groceries and less bulky than paper bags.

In a month during the ski season, The Market at Park City might distribute 80,000 bags to customers. Of those, fewer than 1,000 might be made of paper, he said. The grocery store pays one-half of one cent for a plastic bag while it costs five to seven cents for each paper bag, according to Holm. The Market at Park City, meanwhile, provides a five-cent credit per bag if someone brings their own bags to use.

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Decision Expected Next Month on Park City Casino

imagesWyandotte nation Chief Billy Friend tells KWCH News he expects a federal ruling next month that would force the U.S. government to accept or reject the tribe’s application to open a casino in Park City.

The tribe has been fighting since 2006 to develop a casino, but the decision-making agency, the U.S. Department of the Interior, has taken no action.

The state of Kansas has opposed the casino, which wouldn’t be far from the recently opened state-owned Kansas Star Casino.

Park City End of Year Statistics Report for 2012

park-city-ski-resort-night-skiing_500The year-end 2012 statistical report released by the Park City Board of REALTORS® indicates an increase in the number of sales and total dollar volume, with inventory the lowest it has been in over six years. It also shows a slight gain in median prices compared to 2011. The total volume of real estate sold for the entire market area (Summit and Wasatch Counties) reached $1,240,542,783 in 2012 — a 15% increase over 2011.

The number of sales continued to climb in 2012 with a nine percent increase over 2011 in all property types combined, reaching 1,817 total transactions. This is up 61% over the low point in 2009. The number of sales now surpasses the early 2000’s and is approaching the number of sales necessary to be termed a more balanced market. Sales for the year were very strong after the first quarter of 2012. Each of the last three quarters averaged over 150 sales more than the first quarter. Quarter Four is up 28% compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.

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Park City Mountain Resort Launches New Teen-Specific Group-Ride Program

i-ride-park-city-logoPark City Mountain Resort introduces a new way for skiers and snowboarders ages 15-17 to discover the mountain in a group all their own with its newest spring instruction program, Teen Select.

From mellow groomers to our Signature Runs and powder-filled bowls, Teen Select groups, never larger than four kids to an instructor, explore the entire mountain, with each group making its own unique experience appropriate to its ability level – even getting off the mountain and exploring downtown Park City for lunch, if they choose! Teen Select participants leave the days of kids ski school behind, without being stuck with their parents, and develop their skills while making friends with a group of kids their own age.

The one-day Teen Select program is open to 15-17 year old skiers and snowboarders who are comfortable on green terrain and above, and runs 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays this spring: March 10-12, 17-19, 24-26, 31 and April 1-2.

Learn more about Teen Select here.

The Best Town in America: Park City, Utah

park-city-utah-best-towns_fe“Know how I can tell that’s a local?” asks Dana Williams, the 58-year-old mayor of Park City, Utah, nodding toward a fit thirty-something guy in a flat-brimmed baseball hat. “The bandaged wrist.”

Park City feels like a Colorado ski town dropped into Utah’s 12,000-foot Wasatch Range, with one significant difference. Unlike Telluride or Aspen, it has a major city, Salt Lake, and an international airport 30 minutes away. Local love for Park City can feel a little over the top—it got two-thirds as many votes in our contest (5,179) as it has residents. To see if that affection was justified, I parachuted in for a 72-hour, Chamber of Commerce–led recon tour. What I found was a town that breeds the active lifestyle.

In winter, Parkites can access three world-class ski areas from town: Deer Valley, Park City, and the Canyons. Then there’s climbing, hiking, and camping in 500,000 acres of wilderness in the nearby Uinta Mountains, 370-plus miles of trails, a blue-ribbon trout stream (the Provo River), and an Olympic training center built for the 2002 Salt Lake Games. More than 100 Olympians still live here. There are also lax(er) liquor laws than elsewhere in the Beehive State—and Utah’s first distillery since Prohibition, High West.

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Food Writers Conference in Park City

Food writers, bloggers and cookbook authors from around the country will travel to Park City next month to learn about Utah’s distinctive food culture and to hone their skills as part of the 2013 Association of Food Journalists annual conference.

The three-day event takes place Sept. 18-20 at The Treasure Mountain Inn and surrounding Park City restaurants and venues.

Headlining the conference is social media expert and award-winning cookbook author Monica Bhide, who was chosen by the Chicago Tribune as a top food writer to watch. Bhide is the author of three cookbooks and has been published in national and international publications including The New York Times, Food & Wine and Bon Appétit. She will share her insights on food writing in today’s world of social media.

Attendees also will take part in several discussions from how to hone their photography skills to writing a cookbook in the digital age.

They also will get a taste of Utah’s distinctive food culture by attending a Dutch Oven cooking demonstration, learning about food storage and getting a better understanding of Utah’s nutrition supplement industry.

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Vail Cuts 42 Jobs As It Lines Up to Run Canyons Resort

vail cuts jobsMore than 40 Canyons Resort employees learned they will no longer be part of the operation when Vail Resorts Inc. takes over next week.

Denver-based Vail Resorts, which signed a long-term lease last month to run the Park City-area resort for Talisker Mountain Inc., said Monday it will retain most of the resort’s total workforce of 1,800. But 42 positions in Utah were eliminated after the industry giant did a “comprehensive review [of] areas where we need to consolidate duties, change or redirect resources and eliminate duplicate efforts,” said Vail spokeswoman Kelly Ladyga.

Nathan Rafferty, president of Ski Utah, marketing arm of the state’s $1 billion-a-year industry, said he did not know any specifics about the cuts but added a reduction in force seemed “inevitable” since Vail has a well-established corporate structure that would not need duplicated efforts by personnel in Park City.

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The Epic Pass Will Include Canyons Next Season

indexThe Epic Pass, a prized multi-resort ski pass sold by Vail Resorts, will include access to Canyons Resort during the next ski season, a result of the lease deal between Talisker Corporation and Vail Resorts involving Canyons Resort.

In a prepared statement announcing the lease, Vail Resorts says people who buy the Epic Pass will be able to use it at the Snyderville Basin resort on an “unlimited and unrestricted” basis.

The Epic Pass is also good at Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge and Keystone, which are in Colorado, and the Lake Tahoe-region resorts of Northstar, Heavenly and Kirkwood. It also offers holders five days of skiing at a resort in Switzerland and a combined five days at three resorts in Austria, including St. Anton.

The statement says the Epic Pass for the 2013-2014 ski season is currently priced at $689 for adults, lower than the price of a season pass at Canyons Resort during the most recent ski season.

The Epic Pass is well known in the industry for offering buyers flexibility between two of North America’s prime skiing regions, Colorado and Lake Tahoe.