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Park City ‘roof-alanche’ sends big snow pile onto Main Street sidewalk

Snow apparently cascaded off a roof of the Centennial House, a decrepit Main Street building, on Thursday night or Friday morning. The snow buried a stretch of sidewalk. The incident followed a little more than two years after a similar case at the Centennial House.
Jay Hamburger/Park Record

A massive amount of snow apparently cascaded off the roof of a decrepit old building toward the southern end of Main Street, covering a stretch of sidewalk that, though not in the middle of the shopping, dining and entertainment district, is frequently traveled by pedestrians.

The snow dropped off the Centennial House sometime Thursday night or Friday morning. The snow remained across the sidewalk during the 8 a.m. hour of Friday. The snow and chunks of ice appeared to rise to three or four feet in height. Some of the snow and ice reached Main Street itself. A significant amount of snow remained on the roof, two stories from the Main Street level, on Friday morning.

The Park City Police Department did not receive an immediate report of the slide from the roof, sometimes referred to as a “roof-alanche.” There were no known injuries, the Police Department said.



A firm known as Mountain Seas Development Ltd. owns the building, according to County Courthouse property records. The Summit County Assessor’s Office values the Centennial House at $583,191. A representative of Mountain Seas Development Ltd. declined to comment on Friday morning.

The Centennial House has fallen into a state of disrepair and has not been occupied for years. The sidewalk outside the building, though, is part of the route between Main Street and the southern reaches of the Old Town neighborhood. People who live on Main Street itself as well as streets like Daly Avenue, King Road and Hillside Avenue regularly walk by.



The cascade on Thursday night or Friday morning followed a little more than two years after a similar incident at the Centennial House that sent snow and ice onto the same stretch of sidewalk. In the release from the roof in February of 2017, an approximately 30-foot stretch of the sidewalk was covered. A Park City official who responded to the release in 2017 estimated between 800 and 1,000 pounds of snow and ice fell. City Hall that year dispatched heavy machinery to clear the snow and ice from the sidewalk. Traffic barricades and caution tape was also posted at that time. The fire marshal of Park City in 2017 said the release could have crushed a person.

The release from the roof of the Centennial House is the most recent in a string of incidents in Park City caused by the heavy snow. The Park City area was pummeled with storms through much of the winter, leaving large amounts piled up on roofs across the city. The National Weather Service on Friday forecast small amounts of snowfall on Saturday and Sunday before sunny conditions on Monday and Tuesday.

The Centennial House dates to approximately 1901 and City Hall in 2008 indicated the building was in uninhabitable or ruined condition. The municipal government in 2007 condemned the building. No one is believed to have lived in the Centennial House for at least 13 years.

The Centennial House is one of three boardinghouses built during Park City’s silver-mining era that remain standing. The others are the Star Hotel and the building that now houses Riverhorse Provisions, which are also both on Main Street.


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