Taste or Schlock

Rich man comes and rapes the land,

Nobody caught 'em.

Put up a bunch of ugly boxes,

And, Jesus, people bought 'em.

Eagles

When did we lose the ability to differentiate between Tasteful and Schlock.  Back in the day we had taste and we approved Deer Valley and kept our eye on Park West and K-Mart, we buffed out Main Street as Disneyland and kept our eye on Park Avenue and Swede Alley, we built the Muni, and Nicklaus GC,  and kept an eye on Hideout and Wohali.  We had professional architects and planners, engineers and designers on the city and county commissions who knew good from bad, right from wrong, taste from schlock and new how to say NFW.  They respected zoning and codes, setbacks and height limits and made exceptions only for taste and not for the developers’ bottom line.  We didn’t need a bunch of consultants, accountants, economists and lawyers to tell us what we can do.  We could see it. We had an aesthetic.  It wasn't all about money

Perhaps we lost our aesthetic when they burnt down the Coalition building, a new and old symbol of our town, to build Lower Main Street.  Perhaps it was when they started building visible water tanks on the hillsides, with no revegetation, that stick out like a sore thumb.  Plant some trees, you have the water!  Perhaps it was when we refused a classic fly-over intersection at 224 and 80, or when they built concrete planters on 224 and 248.  Maybe it was when we had a design-by-committee mall on Main Street that we replaced with another mall.  Everything got too tall, too wide, too massive and too ugly.

Take, for example, the proposed twisted Scandinavian design submitted for the Kimbal Art Center for Main Street that was unique and stylish but was rejected for height limits while across the street they made the old Utah Coal and Lumber building into a ten-story monstrosity.  That proposed masterpiece could have been an anchor on Main Street like the Gehry Museums are for Cleveland, Seattle or Bilbao Spain.  It just takes a little vision. 

Instead, Kimbal sold out and promised to do something classy on the new City Arts Parcel along with Sundance.  Then Sundance and Kimbal fled because of the price tag and delays.  Fair enough.  So now we are looking at schlock affordable housing with a postage stamp dog-run park and a hotdog stand on the corner because that’s what the developer wants and the city wants to recoup some of the money they spent on the parcel. 

Forget the money, it’s gone, move on.  Let’s do something nice and tasteful, useful and practical on this parcel that we can all enjoy in perpetuity.  Like Olmstead built Central Park, for example, or the Rockefellers donated Teton NP and the UN Plaza in NYC.  How about a few small apartments on a big lawn, like Tomas Jefferson built at UVa, with a few coffee and sandwich shops like the Seattle Seaport, and a rail trail connecting to uptown like the Highline from Hell’s Kitchen to Hudson Yards.  Hide a parking, bus-transit center underground like Cleveland or add a gondola to the skiing like Telluride and Whistler.  

Let’s get boldly creative with our  and allow them to build something striking at the Yarrow Crossroads or ingenious like cantilevering 448 over the adjacent wetlands like the road to Aspen or Glenwood Canyon.   Let’s put 224 underground like the Big Dig in Boston and build people and wildlife crossings on top with some stores and houses, so we don’t become another freeway town like Vail.   Let’s build tunnels instead of endless cut and fill sections for our roads or lets pull our streams out of their pipes and make them part of our landscape instead of a nuisance.  Lets make walkable and bikeable districts instead of shopping mall parking lots, with Daytripper parking on the outskirts and busses to the CBD.

This isn’t rocket science and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but we shouldn’t ask a third-party developer what he thinks. I realize it comes down to money but honey we’ve got plenty of that and the second homeowners pay for most of it anyhow.   We can raise enough money for a $100 million climbing wall and pool, (a dollar a day per home) if we include open space and trails, so let’s focus this kind of energy on finishing this town with style and grace.    It just takes a little inspired foresight and proactive creativity to keep Park City Cool, reject the schlock and imagine something new and different and tasty.