Park City’s elders helped build the resort town. Now, they’re retiring with few housing and care options.

Park City • The train station in the town of Keetley could have been lost in the 1990s, when crews dammed the Provo River and flooded the former community to create the Jordanelle Reservoir.

But as the story goes, seniors in Park City had been told years earlier, “If you can move it, you can have it.” And they did, raising enough money through bingo games, yard sales and raffles to fund the building’s two-day, 15-mile trek. It was placed just off Main Street on Woodside Avenue, in a coveted Old Town spot that some seniors ski into in the winter.

Today, as many residents who helped shape Park City have grown older, they’ve outgrown their upcycled home. In the last five years, membership at the Park City Senior Center has quintupled from less than 100 to now more than 500.

“We have no place for anybody to sit,” Linda McReynolds said on a recent sunny May afternoon, after she and other center board members arranged benches outside. “Which is why we’re sitting out here.”

The squeeze has convinced the seniors to give up their sweetheart land lease — $1 per year, for 99 years — as part of a plan to develop a new center surrounded by housing, including affordable units and spots for seniors.

The city has approved $3.5 million to construct the new center, but that amount is still being negotiated and could change, a city spokesperson said last week. The developer — which has been selected by the city but is not being disclosed during ongoing negotiations — will finance the housing project.

After seniors paid for the station’s move in 1976, the clock began on the long lease the city offered them for the 1.53-acre site. Seniors and the city have agreed to transfer the remaining years of the deal to a lease on the new center, instead, allowing development on the land.

Several years ago, the seniors successfully pushed back against efforts to move them elsewhere to make way for workforce housing. That conflict motivated the center’s members to get involved and advocate for themselves.

“It’s just a huge percentage of the population that’s been ignored,” said Marianne Cone, a senior center board member. “We’re tired. We’re not taking it anymore.”

That frustration led to the current proposal, which achieves both Park City’s and the senior’s goals — building more affordable housing in the increasingly unaffordable mountain town, and upgrading a space that can fit the aging population’s needs for years to come.

In the current center, about a dozen circular tables set with seven seats each are crammed in the dated, wood-paneled main space. When members file into line for lunch or say hi to friends, there’s just inches of space to navigate between chair backs — a real problem if you use a walker or wheelchair.

The senior center’s leaders estimate they need about 7,000 more square feet for a larger dining room and kitchen, as well as an exercise space and a living area.

But a new center and the around 50 new adjacent apartment units planned won’t solve all of aging Park City’s problems. There’s still a lack of affordable housing for seniors, some of whom are longtime homeowners but struggle to afford downsizing in the resort town’s pricey real estate market.

And there’s a lack of care facilities, while demand for these resources is only going to keep growing.

Serving a ‘silver avalanche’

While Utah remained the youngest state in the nation in 2022, the retirement-age population of those 65 and older was the fastest growing age group between 2021 and 2022, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s 2024 Economic Report to the Governor.

In Summit County, where Park City sits, an estimated 13.8% of residents are 65 or older — higher than the 11.9% of residents statewide, according to census data.

That percentage grows to 21.67% when including Summit County residents 60 and over — the age when they can join a senior center — and 36.35% when those 50 and older are considered.

This growing population isn’t unique to Utah. It’s a national trend, as more and more baby boomers reach retirement age. Nationally, it’s sometimes referred to as the “silver tsunami.” The seniors in Park City prefer the more apt “silver avalanche.”

Park City seniors are the same people who helped transform the mountain town into the vibrant community it is today, Cone said. They started businesses and nonprofits, and worked at the ski resorts that now attract powderhounds from across the world.

A new senior center would recognize those past contributions, as well as the work many of them still do, said Mayor Nann Worel.

“Goodness sakes, when you look at the volunteers at every fundraiser for the nonprofits, or Sundance, or whatever, that senior population is out there,” she said, “and they’re active, and they’re working hard.”

The city had long wanted to put affordable housing on the site, she said. And Worel, who is herself a member of the senior center, said she has been working to prioritize seniors’ needs for the last several years as they’ve sought a better space.

The proposed multilevel center could include an entry and reception space, conference and conversation rooms, living spaces large enough for two pool tables, a kitchen and dining area, as well as exercise and other multipurpose rooms and storage, according to mockups in the city’s request for proposals from developers. That would mean no more meetings on the outside benches.

The developer’s vision for the site will be made public once the city reaches a predevelopment agreement with the company and the proposal goes before the City Council for approval.

Of the 50 housing units planned for the project, according to a discussion at a November City Council meeting, approximately 80% would be affordable units. The remaining 20% would be set aside for market-rate senior housing, according to the city’s request for proposals.

That document set a timeline to break ground on the new center and apartments by September. Worel said it might take longer. She said she hopes the project can get through the planning commission in the next year, but she added that timeline is probably a bit ambitious.

Future of current center unclear

Seniors also have asked Summit County (which provides funding and services for the Park City center, as well as in Coalville and Kamas) for $750,000 to operate the new center. That funding wasn’t approved, but County Council members expect the request to come before them again soon.

It’s not clear what will happen to the old Keetley building, McReynolds said. The seniors have offered it to a nonprofit under the terms of their original deal — if they can move it, they can have it.

This new space is important enough to get rid of the old station building, said center board member Syd Reed, because the center serves as a community hub for a population that struggles with isolation. As the number of seniors grows, they need more space to commune.

That lesson in loneliness is one Reed said she learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Every day they spent without talking to somebody or seeing somebody or or socializing was so detrimental to their health,” she said.

The existing center, overseen by the board led by president Liz Novack, aims to combat that with activities and lunches. Reed mentioned that they have begun instating small rules that make a big difference, like having members wear name tags so no one feels embarrassed if they can’t remember someone’s name.

The center also successfully sought grant funding to hire an activities coordinator, who plans outings and brings in speakers and instructors based on the whims of members — from bird-watching to workout classes.

“If several people come up and say, you know, we’re really into biking in the Uintas, she’ll try to get some ‘organized biking in the Uintas group’ going,” McReynolds said.

Even the lunches are important to some members, who bring plastic containers to take leftovers home, either because they don’t want to cook for just themselves, Worel said, or because they’re trying to stretch the $3 meal as far as it can go.

‘65 in a blink of the eye’

Regardless of the new senior center in the works, there’s still very few places in Summit County for seniors to go if they need continuing care.

The only option in the county is a small center in Oakley, about 20 miles east of Park City. Most people end up leaving the county, and losing touch with their community and friends, Cone said.

Cone and other board members have long been lobbying the County Council to support a continuing-care retirement community — a social space where seniors can get the medical and memory care they may need as they age.

County Council members have been receptive, but there are no plans in place, with priorities seeming to center on funding child care and affordable housing options to support the county’s workforce, Cone said.

County Council member Tonja Hanson agreed such a place is a “huge need.” But a practical roadblock remains: Where would it go? The location has to be near health care and public transportation, and walkable for people with mobility issues. And, she said, they want the mountain views they’ve enjoyed much of their life.

“God willing, everybody is going to be in this [silver] tsunami at some point. People think, ‘Oh, this is not my problem. It’s not going to affect me,’” Hanson said, “but I’m telling you, you turn 65 in a blink of the eye.”

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