Bruce Erickson, the Park City planning director, has died, the municipal government said on Monday. He had served as a Park City planning commissioner prior to the appointment to the director post and is seen as having had broad influence on growth matters.
Park Record file photo
Bruce Erickson, the planning director at City Hall and a figure who influenced the growth of Park City for decades, has died, the municipal government said, a loss that will reverberate through the municipal ranks as well as the wider community.
A statement from City Hall did not identify a cause of the death. There had been recent indications he was in failing health and he did not have as prominent a role, at least visibly, in Planning Department matters in the final months of 2020 as he had previously.
The incoming Park City planning director is married to the executive director of the Kimball Art Center, one of the organizations involved in City Hall’s efforts to develop an arts and culture district. There will be discussions regarding whether Gretchen Milliken, who starts at the Marsac Building shortly, will recuse herself from talks about the district.
Park City has tapped an official from the government in Louisville, Kentucky, to become the planning director at the Marsac Building. The Ohio River city has an independent streak that is encapsulated by the term “Keep Louisville Weird.” There have long been similar independent impulses in Park City.
Courtesy of Jay Hamburger
Many Parkites see the community as having lost the funk of the early skiing days of the 1970s as real estate prices soared starting in the 1990s, making it difficult for rank-and-file wage earners and small, independent stores that are regarded as adding to the fabric of the community.