The Changing Face of Town
Photography: Don Weller
Ted Larremore never liked what visitors called his neighborhood. Sitting on the porch of his 1904 miner’s home, the retired miner growled to me once, “Don’t call it ‘Old Town.’ It isn’t! It’s Park City. The rest of this,” he gestured down Park Avenue, “is annexed suburbia.”
But Ted’s passed away now, and Old Town is what residents and visitors alike call the old miner’s houses stacked on the hillsides on either side of Main Street. And slowly but surely, Old Town itself is turning into Park City’s newest neighborhood, a fact that worries almost everyone in town.
“I think it’s on the verge of losing its history,” life-long Old Town resident Gary Kimball laments. From his perch on Woodside Avenue, Kimball sees new construction all around. “They’ll take a two-room cabin and do a wonderful job of restoring it and then tack a McMansion on the back of it.”
From Prospect Avenue at the top of Old Town, artist and city council member Marianne Cone has observed the changes since 1975. “It’s hard to watch it all change. It’s under siege now.”
And from his vantage point farther up Woodside from Gary’s house, Ken Martz speaks loudly to be heard. “Right now a concrete truck and a cement pump are blocking my driveway. A five-unit project is going up right next to us,” he sighs. “The whole thing is really wearing.”
Park City’s residents, planners and elected leaders are all reaching the same conclusion this year: Old Town is a treasure that draws — and charms —
visitors, but Old Town is shrinking before our eyes in a flurry of new construction.
“It’s emotionally hard for us [as a], community, because we look at that snapshot in time and forget that we’re an organic community,” City Planning Director Patrick Putt observes from his Old Town office. “We have to be respectful of the [town] they left us, but it’s also okay to move on. It’s the degree. There’s going to be more [change], and it’s going [to happen] faster.”
Under Putt’s direction, the city hired historic preservation consultants Dina Blaes and Beatrice Lufkin to assess what’s happening as land values skyrocket and new buyers want to maximize the tiny square footage of Old Town’s 25-foot wide by 75-foot deep lots. They inventoried 482 structures and reached some shocking conclusions. “We’ve warned the city they are at risk of losing their des-ignation as a National Historic District,” Blaes reports.
There are two different components to Old Town. The Main Street Historic District includes 65 commercial buildings along Main Street from the top of the street to the Union Pacific Depot. The Blaes and Lufkin report found that 49 properties were deemed historic in 1995, but in the decade since, that number has dwindled to 34.
The second part of Old Town is bureaucratically named the “Mining Boom Era Residences Thematic District.” In 1984, 106 structures were deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. Thirty-three homeowners declined to be listed on the register, but 73 were listed. Today, a quarter of the listed houses have been remodeled so radically that they no longer comply with the designation, or they have been torn down and replaced altogether. “In 1995, there were four historic structures on Lowell Avenue,” Blaes says. “There are none now; they’ve all been demolished.”
Clearly, the historic fabric of Old Town has declined rapidly in the two decades that coincide with Park City’s rise as a major ski destination. “Old Town is a huge economic development machine,” Blaes points out, “but the integrity of the historic district is at risk.”
Now Putt and his staff are trying to get a grip on what’s happening before it is too late. Armed with the Blaes and Lufkin report and a lot of involved citizens, the city is reviewing how it approves new projects in Old Town. “The practical side is to make these buildings function in a modern context.” Putt calls the old houses “wooden tents” that were never meant to last. Few are on any kind of foundation. Those that have foundations sit on rocks and rotting mine timbers. Most were built before the invention of cars. Parking is getting difficult as empty lots are bought and developed. And Putt says, “The minute you put a garage on these buildings, it changes their architectural character.”
The trend doesn’t necessarily have to continue unchecked. The Blaes and Lufkin report found a number of once-historic structures that could be returned to their former integrity if facades and modern porch additions are peeled back. And some of the sturdier “wooden tents” can be jacked up and have garages placed beneath them, minimizing the architectural harshness of garage doors.
Park City is not a museum frozen in time. It is a dynamic, living city of change, and has been since the first prospector hammered into an outcrop of silver ore. But the pace of change today is breathtaking, and Old Town’s many defenders have their work cut out for them.
Author and television journalist Larry Warren is a long time Park City Magazine contributor. He's always wanted to live in Old Town, but isn't a millionaire.
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