Developer pulls out of Summit County-Air Force project

The on-again, off-again proposal for a Summit County development to underwrite an Air Force recreation site is off, again. Last year, the Air Force unveiled a proposal to build a 1.2 million-square-foot commercial development in Summit County that would defray costs of a hotel for military use to be built in nearby Wasatch County.

But in negotiations with the state’s Military Installation Development Authority, which was created by the Legislature to aid the Air Force in such developments, Park City and Summit County were able to reduce the commercial footprint to 350,000 square feet, according to a nonbinding letter of intent signed last month. Suddenly, Monday afternoon several hours before a public hearing on the matter, the deal was off. The project developer, DDRM, was unsatisfied with the “low, artificially set limit” on size of the development, according to Rick Mayfield, the director of MIDA, in a letter to Summit County and Park City.

The project, expected to bring a Costco store to Summit County, would be too small, according to Mayfield. “The significant threshold seems to be 500,000 square feet.” Salt Lake Tribune