In a quiet Park City neighborhood known for stunning vistas and mind-boggling property values, a renovation and landscaping project has resulted in a lawsuit and a federal inquiry.
It is the latest case involving citizens who are pushing back on City Hall building and planning work.
This conflict pits Park City Planning Commission Chair Sarah Hall and city hall employees against nine neighbors who say the city is looking the other way as, they allege, Hall violates building and land use codes on her seven-acre property.
Hall joined the planning commission in 2018 and became chair in 2023. The commission advises the city council on land use and building permits. Members are appointed to four-year terms by the mayor and council.
The neighbors’ 3rd District Court complaint seeks code enforcement at Hall’s home. Separately, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is examining landscaping and drilling on Hall’s property that may violate the federal Clean Water Act. Violations can carry fines of up to $50,000 per day and possible prison time, depending on whether the mistakes were negligent.
The LLC that owns the Halls’ home and Park City Municipal are named as defendants in the court complaint. City attorney Margaret Plane declined to comment. Park City spokesman Clayton Scrivner said the city is focused on the litigation “rather than attempting to unravel inaccuracies and rumors.”
Corps concerns
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sent Hall a certified letter over the summer notifying her of the inquiry, but it was returned unopened after five weeks. Hall received a copy earlier this month.
“This letter is a request for information regarding potential unauthorized activity in wetlands,” it says, and it later asks, “What is the purpose of the drill rig seen in Enclosure 3, as it appears to be conducting operations in areas previously verified by the Corps as wetlands.”
Wetlands are low-lying areas near bodies of water — protecting them benefits water quality, flood control, erosion and animal habitat. Park City land management code outlines processes for disturbing such areas.
Sarah Hall did not respond to a request for comment. Her husband, Gerry Hall, called neighbors’ complaints “a constant onslaught for the last 11 months that has left us largely unable to correct the public record at any point,” and said he was confident things would be resolved in his family’s favor.
Regarding the Army Corps inquiry, he said, “all of our actions have been in concert with and supported by water rights and wildlife habitat restoration experts. Our goals are to protect and improve the character and resources of this beautiful property which we believe aligns with the Army Corps’ ultimate mission.”
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers letter by The Salt Lake Tribune on Scribd
Seven-figure renovation
The Halls bought their home on Meadow Creek Drive in 2020. Home purchase prices are not public in Utah, but it was listed for $9 million, and its estimated value today is $10 million to $14 million.
City Hall records show the planning department issued the Halls a building permit in 2021 for a $1.25 million renovation that included a pool.
Bob Theobald’s backyard abuts the Halls’ property. His and his neighbors’ lots are generally under a half-acre, with older, more modest homes than the Halls, which real estate listings describe as approximately 12,000 square feet with five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, ponds, waterfalls and a “guest suite studio.”
Theobald, 75, is a land use researcher who worked on projects like Promontory and the Mayflower Resort. He says he has spent thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars filing complaints and meeting with city officials to highlight permit violations, but they dismissed him.
“They say I complain about everything she does,” he said. “The reason I do is because everything she does is in violation of code, and I’m not going to stop.”
Among the claims he makes in his lawsuit, which at least six of his neighbors say they are in the process of adding their names to: the Halls built a pool without a conditional use permit; their renovation plans were approved without required components like architect-certified square footage and sensitive lands review; they are drilling where they shouldn’t be; and their house was already larger than code allows for the neighborhood, which should have triggered more scrutiny of building plans.
The lawsuit cites meeting minutes and documents that allegedly show Hall working to change codes related to her renovation, and changing details on her permit application with help from officials as work was occurring. It also alleges city officials denied neighbors’ stop work request, then denied them the ability to appeal that to the Board of Adjustment.
More recently, the Summit County assessor said Gerry Hall visited her office last month and updated his home’s square footage in county records, reducing it by 3,000 feet. Neighbors say the house exceeds size limits by roughly the same square footage. The assessor does not require a physical inspection to make the change.
Retired lawyer Frode Jensen lives next door to Theobald and says he plans to join the lawsuit.
“This is not our job,” Jensen said. “This is the city’s job to issue permits that are in compliance with the law. We have way better things to do than police our neighbors. Filing a lawsuit … paying for a lawsuit, that’s a big step.”
Park City complaint by The Salt Lake Tribune on Scribd
The View Crew
The neighbors, mostly retired, call themselves “The View Crew,” a nod to local codes governing open space in designated areas.
In December 2022, Theobald said, he filed a complaint with the planning department with extensive documentation and code citations including Clean Water Act concerns, and asked for an investigation. A few months later, the city said it looked into complaints and found nothing amiss with the Halls’ project.
After highlighting concerns in more exchanges, Jensen and Theobald said Plane and Mayor Nann Worel scheduled a conference call to explain the city effectively considered the case closed. Worel declined a request to put the contents of the call in writing.
“It is not my practice to write up explanations like the one you request,” she wrote in a follow-up email.
The two next filed an appeal with the Board of Adjustment. Then-planning department director Gretchen Milliken notified them they couldn’t do that because appeals can only be made on “final actions” or within 10 days of a building permit being issued. Final actions are votes or written decisions, she wrote, and the statute of limitations on the building permit had expired a year and a half earlier.
Milliken wrote in an email that the city wasn’t required to put its decision on the complaint in writing. Nothing in writing meant there was no avenue to appeal with the city, which is when the lawsuit started to take shape.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The property of Park City Planning Commission Chair Sarah Hall, which the US Army Corps of Engineers is interested in, is pictured here on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023.
In November 2022, after Theobald first raised questions about the Halls’ building permit, Park City Chief Building Official Dave Thacker emailed the Halls that “building plans do not have the total square footage of the building noted as it is proposed to be built….The approved plans have several areas not included in the square footage totals,” and “A CUP application for a pool will be required based on Land Management Code regulations unless the plans are updated and approved as a hot tub.”
Soon after, planning commission meeting minutes reflect Sarah Hall proposed eliminating pools from CUP requirements. Colleagues asked twice why she brought it up.
Around that time, the Halls’ permit was changed to say “hot tub” instead of “pool,” and Plane, the city attorney, sent a memo to Worel, the mayor, recapping some of Theobald’s concerns. Plane wrote that she had determined the Halls’ permit was properly issued. Her memo didn’t mention the wetlands questions.
Plane’s memo said “a CUP is not required for an indoor hot tub; it is required for an outdoor pool.”
City code doesn’t distinguish between indoor or outdoor water facilities or how big a hot tub can be before it is called a spa or pool.
She also wrote Hall didn’t need to disclose her pool conflict during the meeting when she proposed changing code affecting pools.
The Halls’ pool/hot tub is 15 feet by 16 feet and up to 8.6 feet deep according to plans on file at the assessor’s office. Gerry Hall said that’s not what was built, and emailed a photo of a 3.5 feet deep hot tub being constructed. He said the smaller size was why the city allowed them to change their permit to say hot tub.
Spotty track record
The city planning department has lost several appeals of its work in recent years.
In 2020, residents appealed a permit for a three-story home on a ridgeline. Residents argued that altering ridgeline views violated the city’s land management code. By the time they prevailed, the home had been built and the city agreed to pay to have the third story removed.
In 2021, Theobald’s neighbor started installing a pickleball court in his backyard that Theobald said it violated setback rules. He called the city, which issued a stop work order, looked into it and told him the work didn’t require a permit because the nearly 2,000-square-foot sports court and surrounding 10-foot fence was considered a patio. Theobald researched code, learned pickleball courts are “private recreational facilities” and the project was stopped when it was almost completed.
The highest profile appeal was the national news-making decision to rescind Vail Resorts’ chairlift upgrade permit for Park City Mountain in 2022, after new chairlifts had been delivered. Vail’s permit application was approved without planning commission review. On appeal, the planning commission agreed with citizens who argued the permit violated existing development agreements and should not have been issued. Vail is appealing and the citizen group said it now faces a costly court fight against the industry giant.
Members of the View Crew say they plan to file an amendment to their lawsuit to add the drilling, then waiting for the city to respond.
Theobald believes the alleged missteps stem from “coincidental incompetence or complicit deceit,” but would still like to see lawyers resolve the lawsuit as quickly as possible.
“I’m willing to settle,” he said. “Basically, follow the law and we’re done.”
Correction: Bob Theobald worked on projects including Promontory Club and the Mayflower Resort. He did not work on City Creek Center, as initially reported.
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