Another Olympics is on the horizon for Park City, and while it may seem like yesterday, our first time hosting was over 22 years ago now.
The following excerpt is from an oral history I conducted with ReNae Rezac, who was working in the Park City Planning Department at the time. If you are interested in being interviewed for an oral history, email me at research@parkcityhistory.org.
ReNae: So, I guess I was working in the Planning Department when we had the Olympics. What a blast. That was so fun. I had an interesting experience. For one of the events that were held at Deer Valley, there were only two of us that were up there doing the offloading of people to go up the event which wasn’t bad. When it got bad was after the event and everybody was in such an all-fired hurry to get off the mountain. There were only two of us trying to control these mobs of people. They actually got what I would consider a little out of control, pushing and shoving trying to get on the buses first. They just wanted to get down the mountain and go to the restaurant or do whatever they had going on. It was a little stressful. I would say that the City was really good in changing the way they did things to accommodate that kind of mentality. The next time they had an event up there they had a lot more than two people to try to help people on the buses.
Dalton: What else do you remember about the Olympics? Did you attend a lot of events?
ReNae: I didn’t go to a lot of events. I worked a lot at the Transit Center loading. That was a different situation than people offloading from an event. These were people that were heading to events. It was really fun. Everybody was excited. We had buses going to different venues. We would have dumb little contests between the people that were lined up to go to the PCMR or the ones going to Deer Valley. It was really fun.
Dalton: What kind of contests?
ReNae: Trying to see who could do the loudest cheer. Just to keep them occupied and engaged and not focused on when their bus will get here.
Credit: Park City Historical Society & Museum, Myles Rademan Collection
Dalton: What else do you remember about the energy in town or anything like that around the Olympics?
ReNae: I guess the traffic must have been horrendous, but what I remember is all the positive things. It was just awesome. But it was a double-edged sword. We welcomed the world here, then we weren’t a secret anymore and it really opened the door to more real estate development. We used to make jokes in the Planning Department that the billionaires were pushing out the millionaires.
With another Olympics coming, more development is sure to follow. In the meantime, we need to make sure our historic structures are maintained and protected. While our mining era homes have protection from demolition, our ski era homes built in the 1960s and 1970s are not yet on Park City’s Historic Sites Inventory, meaning they are not protected from demolition. And while the Museum is recognizing those building with our annual historic preservation ribbons, we would like to see the City make it a point to protect these homes from the upcoming development (not to mention current development) that will kick off when we are officially awarded the Olympics again. Ski Era homes should be added to the Historic Sites Inventory.
The Park City Museum will be open late, until 8 p.m., on the Final Friday of each month moving forward, in conjunction with the Gallery Strolls.