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Park City starts major Prospector roadwork on Monday

Park City on Monday plans to start a road project in Prospector, work that is expected to continue for months and disrupt traffic on an important street that serves neighborhoods and the commercial district.

The redo of Prospector Avenue is scheduled to stretch until late in the fall. The work will involve the length of the street, which runs between Bonanza Drive and Sidewinder Drive. Drivers headed to and from the restaurants, shops and offices along Prospector Avenue will be impacted, as will people who live in a swath of Prospector.

The project, projected to cost a little less than $2 million, will include milling the road asphalt and putting down a new layer. The crews will build new bus pullouts, put in new lighting and improve the sidewalks.



The workers will start at the intersection of Sidewinder Drive and Gold Dust Lane. The crews will mobilize on Monday with the major work scheduled to start on Tuesday with the beginning of the demolition of sidewalks, curbs and gutters.

Officials as late as June continued to craft a plan for drivers during the work as they considered two options, each of which would have significant effects on the traffic flow.



Corey Legge, the City Hall staff engineer assigned to the project, said on Thursday officials opted for a traffic plan during the work that will turn Prospector Avenue into a one-way westbound road between the Bonanza Drive and Sidewinder Drive intersections for the duration of the project.

City Hall saw the one-way option as the preferred alternative, saying the westbound direction will reduce queuing of vehicles on Bonanza Drive as well as lead to a condensed construction timeline. The option also will not impact the bus routes along Prospector Avenue.

The other option involved maintaining two-way traffic with flaggers and partial road closures. The two-way traffic option remained under consideration until the final stages of planning in late June and early July.

Parking on the street on Prospector Avenue will be prohibited during the work.

Businesses along the Prospector Avenue corridor are monitoring the preparations for the work. They want to ensure vehicle access is maintained to the driveways and parking lots throughout the work. Park City officials and the project team agree with the importance of access to businesses and have taken steps to ensure customers are able to drive to there.

The work is scheduled to start as many drivers in the Park City area are weary of road construction after a major repaving of S.R. 224 along the entryway. Prospector Avenue does not carry anywhere near the traffic as the state highway, but it is busy nonetheless.

The Park City Police Department since May has fielded a series of complaints about road rage cases and other problems between drivers. The police have said the construction on S.R. 224 may have exacerbated the tensions on roads.

City Hall has posted information about the Prospector Avenue work on the municipal website, http://www.parkcity.org. The link to the Prospector Avenue page is: http://www.parkcity.org/government/current-construction-projects/prospector-avenue.


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