"When you start taking away perhaps the key ingredient of the park, which is the land, and think just in business terms, then you've really lost focus of your mission," said Miller, who contributed a historic firefighters' museum to the heritage park. "And I don't like that."

Kenyon Kennard, who served as a curator and historic consultant at the park until 2006, is leading the petition drive, saying the foundation headed by developer Ellis Ivory is failing to protect the park's history and natural setting. The group, like Miller, is incensed with the scheme to put an office building within the park boundary - just one of the actions that run counter to the foundation's mission statement, he said. Kennard said he quit last year when he realized the board's new direction.

Miller spent $750,000 to $800,000 to reproduce Salt Lake City's 1899 Ottinger-Little Hall, a fireman's social hall, to house a collection of early firefighting memorabilia and equipment. Miller's great, great, great grandfather, Jesse C. Little was Salt Lake's first fire chief.

Now, Miller says he is worried about the future of his legacy.

"Building an office building clearly goes away from the established mission of the park," he said. "I know [saving the park] is a big job, but they crossed a line to say, 'We are going to sell our future to save our present.' What you can't do is sell or lease the land and then 20 years later decide it didn't work."

The village recreated in the mouth of Emigration Canyon to celebrate Utah's pioneer heritage has been financially teetering for years because of poor attendance and poor planning by the first foundation board. Last year, the Legislature gave the park a $2 million grant to save it from financial collapse. It also gets an annual $800,000 appropriation. In exchange, lawmakers put Ivory in control of the foundation.

Ivory reorganized the board, cut the staff, then proposed stabilizing the park's finances by leasing a dozen acres of its green space for a three-story office building 900 feet behind the historic Brigham Young home.

"Naturally, we don't like to have anything negative [said about the park], but it's a wonderful country we live in and people can make their opinions known," Ivory said when he learned of the petition drive. "We are doing our best and we'll just continue to try to do our best."

The foundation's 1997 mission statement states its purpose as "improving, enhancing, and beautifying the grounds and facilities of, and restoring the wildlife habitat of, This is the Place State Park."

The petition organizers say Ivory's plans to asphalt the village's roads, open a Starbucks franchise in the gift shop and purchase a "carnivalesque train ride attraction" prove the board lacks the sensitivity and professionalism to operate the historic landmark.

The foundation plan to lease the 12 acres to ARUP Laboratories for a three-tiered administration building and parking lot on the park's northwest corner awaits state Parks Board approval on April 19.

gwarchol@sltrib.com