Local Color
Photography: Dan Campbell
Steve Dering
Steve moved to Park City in 1973, shortly after vacationing here and literally dreaming that he’d be living here, working construction on an old building. His first job in town was pulling bricks out of a Main Street building that had burned. “It was just like the dream! And I ended up owning that building. After that, I always felt like I was supposed to be here.”
Those were the days in town when “there were 1,200 people and 1,400 dogs; 30 percent of the guys I knew were living under assumed names to dodge the draft; and the mayor was also the high school janitor.” Steve describes how laid-back town was with this story: “There was a restaurant called “Solid Muldoons.” On the window in big letters it stated, ‘Try our famous dream burger — best hamburger in Utah.’ So my friend and I go in there for lunch. It’s 12:30 and there’s nobody there. We wait and we wait — and finally this guy sticks his head out of the kitchen and says, ‘Yeah, what do you want?’ ‘We’d love to try one of your famous dream burgers,’ we said. He said, ‘Come back later — I don’t feel like making them now!’”
Steve worked for the Park City Coalition newspaper, then started The Newspaper and served on city council. In 1979, he became the “start-up marketing guy for Deer Valley Resort. For two winters before the lifts opened, we snowcat skied every day with Stein Eriksen, ate gourmet lunches and showed the press around —arguably the best job ever in the ski industry.” Steve went on to start his own ad agency, Dering and Associates (now Dering Elliott, celebrating its 24th anniversary). With his company, DCP International, Steve invented the concept of the residence club, with Deer Valley Club being the first in the world. It served as a prototype for an industry that now does $2 billion in annual sales. “It’s been a great job for me, because I travel extensively, meet interesting people and get to see a lot of nice places.”
Of Park City: “I feel like the town has grown up with a core of individuals who moved here in the early ’70s. Town has matured as we’ve tried to mature (I’m not sure we’ve been successful). For me, though, the litmus test is that I visit great resorts for a living and I’m always happy to come home.”
Steve enjoys his family, (wife of 20 years, Cindy, and daughters Hailey and Abbey), mountain biking, skiing, traveling and reading.
Guiding Principle: “To do things I enjoy and to keep learning. To treat other people like I’d like to be treated. In business the most valuable thing you have is your integrity.”
HELEN ALVAREZ
A Park City local since 1965, Helen taught high school in Salt Lake City, served on our city council for four years, and with husband Matt owned Main Street’s Timberhaus ski shop for 25 years. “Park City was an incredible place to live. There were lots of young people coming out of the Vietnam War looking for different lives. It was an exciting time.”
Alvarez has fond memories of Park City residents who welcomed newcomers. “In those years, Rhea Hurley used to sit in front of The Park Record office and talk about being a young bride living near the mines in Little Cottonwood Canyon all winter. In Daly Canyon , Bea Kummer was welcoming to many young hippies. On Main Street, Art Durante [of Art’s hardware store] extended credit to newcomers who were remodeling old houses and opening new businesses. When our own building caught fire in a November snowstorm, everyone from the volunteer firefighters to friends and neighbors came to help, throwing merchandise out the windows and boxing and cleaning it. Park City people, newcomers and old timers rallied around to help. You can never thank all who helped you when you most needed help.”
Of her city council time, Helen’s most proud of working on “the landscaping ordinance, Deer Valley Drive, developer fees that reduced the impact of development on resident tax payers, water fees that supported the growth and expansion of the system and saving the Marsac building [where her sons attended elementary school].” Regrets? Not passing a sidewalk ordinance, and not limiting house footprints.”
Nowadays, Helen’s life is committed to academics. She has a masters degree in plant ecology (and has fond memories of counting plants on the hills above Old Town, where sheep still grazed, while her mother entertained her then-young sons Marko and Matias on the mine dump). With a PhD in the evolution of human behavior, Helen now teaches online for the University of Utah.
On town now: “I don’t think we benefit from the excessive square footage, but we do benefit from so much else. Each era of newcomers adds something to the city. We have incredibly talented people who do all kinds of things for the public good and I appreciate the efforts of all who have contributed to make this a wonderful place to live. Matt and I love walking on the many trails just outside out front door, the Park City Film Series films, the farmers’ market and living in a town where so many visitors enjoy wonderful vacations.”
Guiding Principle: “I do the best work I can on what I’m doing in the moment. I appreciate the chance to live an intellectually stimulating life in an incredible rural setting.”
CHARLIE STURGIS
Co-owner of White Pine Touring for 16 years and now part of an expanded partnership that runs the company, Charlie Sturgis is an avid mountain biker, cross-country skier and rock climber. His work title is “Minister of Outdoor Satisfaction.” He oversees White Pine’s direction and provides community training in avalanche courses, and backcountry and track skills.
Charlie graduated from the University of Utah in 1975. “I played tennis and some football, but I’d never hiked or been in the mountains before I moved to Utah [from Chicago]. I thought I was a pretty good skier until I moved out here. But standing at the top of Snowbird one day in a blizzard with no goggles or really any clothes to speak of, I said, ‘This rocks! This is cool! I have to do this!’” A “guru” of backcountry skiing, Charlie teases that for him, the difference between downhill skiing and free-heeling is the “difference between having sex with your clothes on or off.”
White Pine’s humble beginnings were renting skis out of a painter’s truck in White Pine Canyon, where many employees lived in teepees at the time. In 1986, the company went year-round with a shop on Main Street and cross-country skiing on the Park City Golf Course. Mountain biking had started in 1981 and “we opened with bikes and a few pair of socks. We almost burned the building down the first day!” (A sock had gotten too close to a display case light).
Charlie reminisces about the early days. “It used to be, after Labor Day, you could roll a bowling ball down Main Street and not hit anything. Our worst day ever was a $35-day. We sold one pair of sunglasses. But I felt good about it, because it was a rainy day!”
Charlie co-authored a mountain bike trail guide, ‘Prime Cuts,’ and served on the Main Street Merchants, Chamber/Bureau, and Park and Rec boards. He is one of the founders of Mountain Trails Foundation. He enjoys his daughter Leah (10) and his wife of 23 years, Kathy, with whom he says, “We’re proud of White Pine’s position in the community as an educational outreach, not just an outdoor specialty store, and we’ve been really happy to make a living in the outdoor industry for 30 years.”
On town: “I was living in a bubble if I thought growth in this town was a surprise. There are some disadvantages to all of the growth, but I still think town has a ton of its old philosophy and spirit. And I still go to the post office and know a ton of people …”
Guiding Principle: “Maximize potential and minimize the damage.”
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