"We will all look at it for the rest of our lives," Susan Fredston-Hermann told the Park City Council in January. "People will ask, how did that get built? And the answer will be, you."
She was talking about a house that, as of this writing, still isn't built. The property sits at 220 King Road, on the hillside above Main Street, and it has been the subject of three lawsuits, a City Council vote, a state legislative maneuver, and a dispute over Bernese mountain dogs. Most guides to buying in Old Town describe the historic district as a fixed boundary: certain streets, certain lot sizes, certain rules about siding and rooflines. What the King Road fight actually shows is something buyers rarely account for. In Old Town, historic design review can reach a property whether or not that property sits inside the district at all. What matters is whether the project can be seen from it.
The Lot That Wasn't Supposed to Be a Problem
Matthew and Tatiana Prince bought the King Road parcel in 2020. Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, and with his wife he also owns The Park Record, the town's newspaper. The property is not zoned like the miners' cottages below it. It sits in the Sweeney Master Planning District, a small cluster of large lots negotiated with the city decades ago that sit above the traditional 25-by-75-foot lots of the historic district proper. On paper, that should have made this a large-lot project governed by large-lot rules.
It didn't work out that way. Because the site overlooks Old Town's historic streetscape, the project still triggered a full Historic District Design Review, the same process a homeowner replacing porch railings on Park Avenue has to go through. That single fact, that proximity and sightline can pull a property into historic review even when its zoning says otherwise, is the piece most buyer guides leave out. If you're purchasing anything on the hillsides ringing Old Town, the question isn't just "am I in HR-1." It's "can my roofline be seen from a historic street below me."
How One Building Permit Took Four Years
The timeline is worth laying out plainly, because the length of it is the point.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2020 | Princes purchase the King Road property, then holding two houses previously used as nightly rentals |
| 2022 | Pesky Porcupine LLC (the Princes' company) submits permit applications for a single-family home, pool, and terrace |
| February 2024 | Planning Commission approves a plat amendment and conditional use permits in narrow votes |
| July 2024 | City Appeal Panel upholds the Planning Commission decision; the two existing houses are demolished |
| Fall 2024 | Planning Director Rebecca Ward approves the Historic District Design Review with conditions; the Board of Adjustment reverses portions of that approval in a 3-2 vote |
| August–December 2024 | Three related lawsuits filed in Third District Court by the Hermanns and by Pesky Porcupine |
| January 15, 2026 | City Council approves a consent agreement (Resolution 03-2026) in a 3-1 vote, reinstating Ward's original approval and its 24 conditions |
| January 29, 2026 | Judge Richard Mrazik declines to dismiss the Hermanns' case, schedules further argument for June 1, 2026 |
Four planning bodies. Three lawsuits. Two years between the first permit application and the first courtroom filing, and the underlying design dispute still wasn't resolved when the most recent public reporting on the case was filed. For a single-family home.
What the Design Review Actually Argued About
It's tempting to assume historic design review is mostly a materials conversation: wood siding over vinyl, matching window styles, roof pitch. Those things matter, but they weren't what stalled this project. The Board of Adjustment's objections were about scale relative to the historic fabric below. Its findings said the plans didn't sufficiently minimize cuts and retaining walls, that the primary façade was too wide for the historic district it overlooked, and that the retaining walls didn't step down gradually the way historic retaining walls in the area do.
That's a different kind of scrutiny than most buyers expect. It's not asking whether your house looks old. It's asking whether your house, sitting above a neighborhood of century-old miners' cottages, makes that neighborhood look smaller than it is. The public description of the home's footprint got flattened into an "11,000-square-foot mansion" headline, but that figure includes parking and fire-truck turnaround area. The actual finished living space in the plans approved under the consent agreement runs closer to 7,500 square feet, with roughly 6,000 square feet of unfinished basement and a 1,000-square-foot detached office. The gap between the headline number and the permitted number is itself a lesson: in a dispute this public, even the size of the house becomes a contested fact.
The City's Own Boards Couldn't Agree on the Rules
Here's the part that should concern anyone buying at the edge of Old Town's historic boundary. The Planning Commission and Appeal Panel treated the Sweeney Master Planning District's large-lot rules as controlling, on the theory that a negotiated planning district takes precedence over the historic district's later-adopted standards. The Board of Adjustment took the opposite approach, comparing the proposed home directly against the historic district below it rather than the large-lot subdivision it technically sits in.
Two city bodies, reviewing the same file, reached opposite conclusions about which rulebook applied. If Park City's own planning apparatus can't agree on whether a large-lot parcel above Old Town should be measured against Old Town's small-lot character or its own subdivision's rules, a buyer evaluating a similar property shouldn't assume the answer is obvious either. This is the friction a portal listing will never show you. It only surfaces once a project is in front of the Historic Preservation Board or the Board of Adjustment, and by then you're the applicant, not the buyer doing diligence.
What Changed in January, and What's Still Open
The consent agreement that passed on January 15 used a mechanism the Utah Legislature created in 2025: a state law amendment (SB262) that lets city councils settle land-use litigation directly, without routing the settlement back through the Planning Commission or Board of Adjustment. Mayor Ryan Dickey has described the years leading up to that vote as a defense of the city's own authority against state-level attempts to strip local control over historic design review.
Under the agreement, Pesky Porcupine accepted all 24 of Ward's original conditions, including adjustments to roof overhangs, roof pitch, and window treatments, and agreed to additional landscaping to soften the visual impact along with road safety improvements including a new fire hydrant. In exchange, the company would cover legal costs tied to the three cases and to development at two adjacent affiliated properties.
The Hermanns weren't part of that negotiation, and they still aren't finished. Their attorneys argued a consent agreement can't bind third-party appellants who never agreed to it, and Judge Mrazik didn't dismiss their case when asked. He set the next hearing for June 1, 2026, and told the attorneys a full trial on the underlying issues, if the case reaches that point, is likely at least a year out. He also said that if the city issues a building permit before the litigation resolves, he'd take up any request for a restraining order immediately. Whether that June hearing produced a resolution isn't something the public reporting available at this writing confirms. For a buyer, that uncertainty is the lesson as much as any single ruling would be.
What to Ask Before You Write an Offer
Most historic district activity in Old Town looks nothing like this. In the same weeks this case was working through court, the Historic Preservation Board was also approving a modest $24,900 grant to help fund exterior wall and roof framing repair on Sandridge Road and a facade restoration at a Main Street commercial building. That's the ordinary texture of design review, and it moves far faster and far less dramatically than a contested new build. But the King Road case shows what happens at the edge cases, and edge cases are exactly where hillside and view-lot buyers tend to land.
Before you make an offer on a property near the historic district boundary, or list one for sale:
- Confirm whether the parcel is inside HR-1 zoning, inside a separate planning district like the Sweeney MPD, or simply visible from the historic streetscape below. Visibility alone can trigger review.
- Ask whether the property has an existing Historic District Design Review approval on file, and whether that approval has been appealed, reversed, or litigated at any point.
- Request copies of any conditions attached to a prior approval. Conditions on roof pitch, retaining wall stepping, or facade width can materially change a renovation or new-build budget.
- If a project is contested, understand that state law generally limits standing to appeal to adjoining property owners, which narrows who can object but doesn't eliminate the risk that they will.
FAQ
Does owning a home in Old Town's historic district mean I need city approval to repaint? Exterior changes visible from the street, including paint on landmark structures, typically require review through the Historic District Design Review process, though the scope of review depends on whether the structure is formally designated.
If my lot borders the historic district but isn't zoned HR-1, am I exempt from design review? Not necessarily. The King Road case shows that a property in an adjacent planning district can still be pulled into full historic design review if the project would be visible from, or would visually affect, the historic streetscape below it.
Can neighbors stop my project after the city has already approved it? Yes, within limits. Appeals generally require standing, and state law has narrowed that to adjoining property owners in most cases, but an approved project can still be reversed on appeal, as it was here, and a reversal can trigger years of litigation before ground is broken.
Old Town's historic character is one of the reasons buyers pay a premium to be there, and it's also the reason the review process protecting that character can be slower and less predictable than it looks from a listing photo. If you're evaluating a hillside lot, a historic cottage, or a teardown near the district line, Jensen and Company can walk the specific parcel history with you before you write an offer. Find Your Luxury Home Today.
