For The Record: Should Deer Valley Resort and Park City Mountain follow Solitude’s lead and charge for parking?
Each week, The Park Record asks residents and visitors to weigh in on a topic of interest. When Solitude Mountain Resort announced it will charge up to $20 for parking this winter, skiers and snowboarders...
Woodside Park open house draws families, workers seeking affordable housing
Ross Waghorn teaches eighth- and ninth-grade English at Treasure Mountain Junior High, and like many who work in Park City, he commutes in from Salt Lake City. And like many, he’d like to change that....
Sheriff’s Report: Woman screaming ‘my husband is beating me up’ leads to arrest
A woman who heard another woman yelling “my husband is beating me up” called deputies to report the incident on Sept. 10, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. When deputies responded to Mirror Lake...
Peace House readies to come ‘out of the shadows,’ unveil new 42,000-square-foot facility
Officials say the new facility, located at 700 Round Valley Drive, will be nothing short of transformational for the nonprofit. At approximately 42,000 square feet, it is roughly 12 times the size of its current home.
Court report: Kamas man gets 40 days in jail for assault
Trisha Jo Sherlene Albretsen, 39, of Kamas, was sentenced for two third-degree felony charges, forgery and theft by deception. The court imposed a 30-day jail sentence, placed the defendant on court probation for 24 months...
A decade in, officials say Park City Hospital has exceeded expectations
When it opened its doors as the first full-fledged medical center in the area, the Park City Hospital had a lot to live up to. As the facility celebrates its 10-year anniversary this fall, those...
Francis shooter sentenced to up to 15 years in prison
The man who shot more than a dozen rounds in a Francis home while his roommates took cover last December was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. Randal Weed Dickinson had been drinking...
Way We Were: For Parkites of the early 1900s, life was no picnic
Life in Park City was not always easy for those who lived in the early 1900s. Diseases and accidents happened quite frequently. Unfortunately, some families suffered great losses in a short period of time. One...
Gillmor closing locks in land preservation on east side of U.S. 40
Though it might not be visible for a few years, and even then perhaps not readily apparent, steps taken this summer by the Summit County Council will define how more than 600 acres on the...
David Hogg and Jaclyn Corin, leaders in March for Our Lives movement, to appear in Park City Saturday
David Hogg and Jaclyn Corin, two survivors of the 2018 massacre of 17 students and faculty at their high school in Parkland, Florida, are set to take the stage for an interview at 7:30 p.m. at the Eccles Center on Saturday.
Park City Old Town housing project nearly done with prices as low as $205,000
Park City leaders next week plan to showcase a City Hall workforce or otherwise restricted housing development in Old Town, highlighting one of what is expected to be a series of significant municipal projects in coming years.
Decision about Silver Creek to Bitner Road connection delayed until at least November
A second access point for the Silver Creek neighborhood has been discussed for at least a decade, and after the Summit County Council’s meeting last week, a decision about any future connection will have to...
Mayflower Mountain Resort’s plans take shape as relationship with Deer Valley remains murky
There is no operation agreement in place between Alterra Mountain Company, which owns Deer Valley, and Extell Development Company, Mayflower’s developer.
Park City sees first snow of the season, sort of
Wednesday morning, Park City woke to a chill in the air, clouds in the sky – and snow in the mountains. Yes, with Labor Day cookouts still fresh in residents’ memories, Park City saw its...
Marketplace: Former pro skier opens yoga and fitness studio in Coalville
Ashley Battersby is introducing Coalville to yoga through her new studio, State of Mind.
Find newspaper coupons online
The Park Record is introducing a new feature for advertisers that makes coupons available online.
The coupons are accessible to consumers through a tile on the right side of the www.parkrecord.com website. After one click, a menu opens showing all the companies with some kind of special. After clicking on the desired establishment, a digital image of a newspaper coupon appears.
This digital image can be printed, emailed or posted to any social networking site, said Park Record Sales Manager Valerie Deming-Spung.
The feature was designed to be bundled with traditional newspaper coupons, but is also available for online distribution only, she said.
Right now there are a few dozen companies offering digital coupons and each has seen several dozen "hits" since last Wednesday, Spung said.
"This is for advertisers and people in the community who like to get things on the Internet and still have the ability to get a printed coupon," she said.
Andrew Kirk
The Mine climbing gym wants permission to build a 15-meter, Olympic-sized climbing wall
Sport climbing is coming to the Olympics for the first time in 2020, a high-water mark for a sport that is a favorite outdoor pursuit for many athletes in and around Park City. When the...
Utah Film Studios in Park City put on market, hoping for a blockbuster deal
The owner of Utah Film Studios, the Park City moviemaking facility, recently put the property on the market, hoping for a blockbuster deal less than two years after taking control of the facility amid litigation between the onetime developer and the financial backer.
Down Syndrome Foundation aims to help local families
Liz Wall and John Wall welcomed their third child, Lottie, into their home 10 years ago.
It was supposed to be a routine birth assisted by a midwife.
"I was all set to have the baby at home, but ended up making best friends with both fire stations in the area who responded to our call, because Lottie was very sick when she was born," Liz Wall said. "She couldn't even breathe when she was born and had a lot of other complications."
One of those complications was Down Syndrome, a birth condition arising from the presence of an extra 21st chromosome.
"Down Syndrome was something we didn't know about," said Wall who became the president of the Wasatch-Summit County chapter of the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation last year. "She changed and rocked our world."
Instead of coming home, having a latte and breastfeeding Lottie, the Walls lived at Primary Children's Hospital for a month with an oxygen tank and learning how to gavage feed, which is a way to provide breast milk directly to the Lottie's stomach.
"Back then, the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation didn't have an outreach up in Park City," Wall said. "They once had a chapter in Heber, but the woman who ran it got too busy to keep it going."
Thankfully, the Early Intervention program, which provides resources for families with special-needs children made contact.
"They do a diagnosis in the home and immediately start occupational therapy and help get the family anything that is needed," Wall said. "That lasts until the child turns three, but for the first four months, we were literally trying to make sure the baby would survive."
The next few years became a crash course for the Walls in Down Syndrome childcare.
The condition affects nearly five out of 10,000 children, Wall said.
"It was a totally different world we were living in at the time," Wall said. "My husband, John, was working in the entertainment industry and traveling a great deal, and this wasn't something that was on our radar."
So, Wall began working as a special-needs parent advocate for Summit Pediatrics.
"They asked me to get involved, and I wanted to learn more about things for our family," she said. "It's been a huge deal, because, I get to be a resource for a lot of families in this area. Not just for the Downsy kids, but others and the needs cross back and forth."
After 10 years, the Walls feel they have their feet back on the ground.
"It's been a crazy ride and the fact that Lottie is even here, that she survived, is a huge deal for us," Wall said.
John Wall said Lottie has given him a deeper appreciation for his family.
"Kids with Down Syndrome are intuitively the sweetest kids in the world," he said. "I tell people who don't understand to 'Imagine having a child that has no ego.' If you ask Lottie what she's going to do each morning, she'll say, 'I'm going to have fun.' And she means it. She can sit all day and have fun. In many ways, she's the most perfect child we've ever had."
Last year, Liz Wall wanted to host a Park City-area Buddy Walk to raise funds for the Down Syndrome community.
"The Park City area has had an influx of kids with Down right now," she said. "There are eight new kids that we know of, and that's a lot.
"So, I wanted to do a Buddy Walk and found the Utah Down Syndrome Foundation does not hold individual walks in each chapter," Wall said. "They decided it was too much work for each chapter to hold one, so they do one big one in the fall in Salt Lake."
Unfortunately, since the annual Buddy Walk services the whole state, there is very little funding left over for Park City, she said.
Still, the UDSF saw Wall's enthusiasm, and with the recent closing of the Heber branch, and asked her to become the Wasatch-Summit Chapter president.
"We've been holding meetings on the first Tuesday of each month at the People's Health Clinic," Wall said. "It's a time to get together as moms and talk.
"Another mother, Muggins Haerter, and I are a little further a long the path with our children, so we help the new moms with how we've done things," she said. "We're here and they can ask us what they need to ask us, and we can all bring our kids."
Meeting and helping families keeps the chapter going.
"We know we can make a difference and we do," Wall said. "We want to be able to help them and make them feel like things are going to be OK."
"We also try not to scare them too much when we tell them our experiences," Wall said with a laugh. "The other mothers are in the beginning stages, and we've been through things that they are not even thinking about, and while it's not necessarily a medical forum, it's been a great little support group for moms to talk about the different issues that come up."
The group also comes up with activities all the family members can enjoy.
Earlier this week, they had a bowling session at Jupiter Bowl.
"They were so gracious to donate some time and lanes for us," Wall said. "It was a great event for the kids to do with their siblings as well, because a lot of times when you have a Down kid, all the parents' efforts are focused on them and the siblings get left out. So, the bowling was a great activity we all could do, and we're thinking of doing a barbeque when the weather gets warmer."
The Utah Down Syndrome Foundation has nine chapters, including a father's chapter. For more information, visit www.udsf.org . For more information about the Wasatch-Summit chapter, contact Liz Wall at Wasatch@udsf.org .
Park City election: traffic headaches, housing struggles, community corporatization
How on earth will the Park City Council candidates address the traffic situation? What will they pledge to accomplish regarding housing? And how well do they understand the impact of the consolidation and corporatization of the ski industry? The fall campaign could answer those questions.
