Quinn's Junction, Junction, What's Your Function?
For decades, locals have called Quinn’s Junction, where Highway 248 exits from U.S. Highway 40, Park City’s “back door.” But with growth in eastern Summit County and increasing traffic, you could now call it the town’s second front door. Quinn’s has been a country crossroads, but now it is poised for major changes that present both opportunity and angst.
The decisions made out there in the next 12 to 18 months will cast the die for the next 25 years,” predicts Park City Planning Director Patrick Putt. “It’s imperative for the community to weigh in on this.”
Private land, and city-owned parcels there are now ripe for development. The first project out of the blocks is a much-anticipated expansion of city recreation space. The land between the National Ability Center and Highway 248 is already approved for a $10.5-million recreation complex, including four playing fields for soccer, rugby and lacrosse, and two or three baseball diamonds, along with a $4-million, enclosed, Olympic-size ice sheet for hockey and figure skating. Ground will be broken for the complex this spring. “It’s intended for local use, but it’s also an economic development tool to attract events to Park City,” City Economic Development Director Colin Hilton points out. “We see Quinn’s as a way to make an entry statement about open space, recreation and health.”
That desire motivates both Summit County and Park City planners to work together on the future of Quinn’s, which is still very much a work in progress. The goal is to avoid a repeat of Kimball Junction, which 25 years ago was itself a country crossroads. If there’s an entry statement Kimball makes to first-time visitors, it is a statement of sprawling commerce, heavy with big box retail stores, huge parking lots, and confusing, overloaded access road patterns.
“There’s nothing simple about it,” the county’s principal planner, Nora Shepard, says. “We’ve learned some lessons from Kimball Junction and we’re not going to repeat the intensity that’s there.”
So far, only one solid proposal is on the table — an application to expand, and hopefully, redevelop, an old industrial area northeast of the junction, where a concrete plant and power substation dominate the scene. Beyond that, property owners have been fairly silent. Intermountain Health Care (IHC) would like to locate a new hospital at Quinn’s, and other proposals in the past have included housing units, convention centers, hotels and commercial space.
Formal planning at Quinn’s is in its infancy. Property owners will want maximum value for their land. Planners envision open space, institutional uses along the lines of a hospital or sports medicine complex, playing fields, low-density housing and maybe a small commercial component. There will be much horse trading ahead, balancing property rights with community goals.
But as planner Putt envisions it, a visitor to Park City exiting at Quinn’s will see open space, people unloading bikes to ride the trails, kids playing on the fields, and a clean, positive institution, such as a hospital or maybe a U.S. Ski Team training center located across the highway. “That would make a great statement about who we are as a community,” he points out.
Park City writer Larry Warren lives a slapshot away from Quinn’s, and can’t wait to get on the ice.
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