Atlanta wants the Sundance Film Festival, does the festival want Atlanta? - Part One
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Welcome to my newsletter, King Williams. I am a documentary filmmaker, journalist, podcast host, and author in Atlanta, Georgia. This newsletter covers Atlanta's hidden connections to everything else.
The Sundance Film Festival is considering leaving Utah after 2027
The Sundance Institute, the organization behind the Sundance Film Festival, has announced that it is considering leaving its home of 45 years, Park City, Utah, once its agreement with the city expires in 2027. The announcement has sent shockwaves throughout the film industry as the nearly 50-year festival could be uprooted from its home, taking its audience of indie and veteran film industry professionals with it.
The nearly 50-year-old festival is considering moving at a time when its attendance is at its highest, having bounced back from pandemic-induced lows in 2020 and 2021. While the institute has not made any additional statements since it announced the festival’s potential move, if it were to move, it would prove to be one of the most successful revitalization projects of the modern era.
The potential move comes as the festival has grown in size and attendance and faces an unknown future as its contract with Park City ends in 2027. Efforts are underway to keep the festival in Park City, but if not, somewhere within Utah.
The announcement was met with enthusiasm from cities across the US, as the potential relocation festival could catalyze the growth and expansion of their local film industries. Atlanta and Minneapolis, Minnesota, are the first to announce interest in relocating the festival to their cities.
2. What is the Sundance Film Festival?
The Sundance Film Festival is America’s largest and one of the biggest independent film festivals in the world. It is also considered one of the ‘Big Five’ global film festivals alongside Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Toronto. The festival is located in Park City, Utah, a former mining town turned ski resort town about 45 minutes outside Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah.
The festival, which featured mainstream and independent films, was started in 1978 as the Utah/United States Film Festival, in partnership with the Utah Film Commission, to attract interest in independent filmmakers in the state.
In 1981, the festival moved from Salt Lake City to Park City at the behest of its new chairman and board member, veteran Hollywood actor Robert Redford. Redford used the proceeds from his film earnings to buy a ski area on the eastern side of Mount Timpanogos, originally called Timp Haven, which he later renamed Sundance after his character Sundance Kid from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Redford began using his Hollywood clout, networks, and celebrity to make the festival more appealing. Then, Redford, alongside several of his producers, started to become involved with the festival, fully gaining control in 1985. This included a complete name change to Sundance in 1991. For the rest of his career, Redford has spent his film earnings to continually re-invest in the festival and Park City.
43 years after taking it over, Redford’s Sundance has become one of the world’s premiere film festivals for both mainstream and independent filmmakers and studios. In addition, it has led to revitalizing and expanding the economic growth of Park City from a former, soon-to-be ghost town mining town into a year-round destination for tourists.
The Sundance brand has expanded far beyond the festival, as it is now an omnichannel media company. As a media property, Sundance has expanded to include a cable channel and streaming service. Its additional offerings include year-round development labs, grants, fellowships, workshops, online courses, and in-person programming in Utah, making Park City the world’s capital of independent filmmaking.
3. Park City: Before the growth of Sundance
Park City, Utah, is a former mountain mining town that is now a year-round destination resort town. It is annually listed as one of the best mountain towns in America, sharing the title with cities such as Jackson, Wyoming; Telluride and Vail, Colorado; and Asheville, North Carolina.
A Utah mining town
In the 1800s, Park City was best known as the mining town that contributed to the wealth of George Hearst, the father of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. George Hearst, a successful California prospector turned businessman, began buying in-full or using equity stakes in other mining properties out west in California, Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, New Mexico, and Utah, including Park City.
Park City primarily specialized in mining gold and lead, and its largest export was silver. However, the city saw declines after the national decrease in the price of silver, which started in World War I in the 1910s and was mostly finished declining by the end of World War II in the 1940s. Wealthy mining magnates such as Hearst had long sold their stakes in the companies, and their workers were leaving town.
This was in addition to a continuing population decline, first due to the slow de-emphasis of mining and second, as World War II exacerbated the population declines. By the 1950s, the town was nearly a ghost town before the idea of promoting it as a mountain resort began.
The pivot to tourism
Starting in the 1960s, the town pivoted from a mining town into a resort town built around skiing and nature tourism. After a slow start, the population stagnated until the late 1970s, with the slow adoption into a destination resort taking shape. After the creation of the Utah/United States Film Festival in 1978 and its subsequent acquisition by Robert Redford’s group in the 1980s, the city began a consistent uptick in residential growth, commercial renovations, and new fundamental estate-related developments.
4. The Sundance experiment was too successful.
As Sundance grew, the city became more prominent with winter and summer tourism, eventually leading to more economic growth. By the early 2000s, the town’s status was undeniable.
Park City is now a wealthy residential resort town
Park City is now one of the wealthiest cities in the state, with median home prices at $1.5m. This is directly related to the growth of Sundance, which has gone from a weekend festival in Utah to a full-time filmmaking operation.
With a full-time residential population of roughly 8,400, up from the 1,000+ or so residents when the festival started. The city has seen its core downtown and residential hubs grow year over year. The city now doesn’t solely rely on Sundance for revenue, as yearly winter and summer tourism alongside interstate travel has made the area a destination district.
The 2002 Winter Olympics also helped.
The town was used as one of the anchors to draw in the 2002 Winter Olympics, as it hosted skiing and snowboarding events at the mountain. Post-Olympics, Park City saw even greater national awareness for the resort town, putting it on the Vail, Colorado, and Lake Placid, New York levels.
Utah is also rumored to be preparing to bid to host the Winter Olympic Games in 2034. The state previously hosted in 2002 and would be a two-time host should it be selected. The combination of Sundance plus the Winter Olympics could catalyze another boom in economic growth in a rising state.
This includes continuing growth in Utah's biggest city, Salt Lake City, undergoing a development boom due to an uptick in regional relocations, a growing tech echo system, and lower living costs. These are also the basis for a new NHL franchise relocating from Arizona (sorry, Thrasher’s fans).
Now, Sundance may be too successful for Park City, which has led to cities like Atlanta hoping for a continuation of the growth, positive reputation, and redevelopment opportunities the festival has brought. However, this would likely require changes in Atlanta's landscape and the built environment.
5. Park City, Utah, is a well-planned town. Atlanta isn’t.
While not an apples-to-apples comparison, Atlanta must determine how to make the city equal to Park City's on-the-ground experience.
Unlike other festivals, which typically house showings in single theaters, hotels, and convention centers, Park City integrates the festival into its existing businesses and city. As a result, the festival and the town operate in unison for the festival. The dozens of coherent, unbroken city streets supporting the festival, containing blocks of retail, restaurants, and lodging, would make a Strong Towns best-of list.
The city has transformed its post-mining town into one that primarily serves tourists. Sundance has been an anchor in Park City's revitalization. However, this revitalization has eschewed decades of sprawl-centered design by promoting rural/exurban density measures such as the infill building of commercial and residential housing. This allows a compounding effect of new developments to enter the market, growing the town's economic base without needing massive land expansions, large mega projects, or highways.
Sundance is unique from other festivals because it is not isolated to a convention center, single movie theater, or an office park. It occurs in all those spaces and other non-traditional spaces such as high schools, restaurants, bars, and event spaces. All of these can be reached on foot.
6. Why is Atlanta so poorly designed?
Atlanta is a great city for hosting events, but it’s not a great city for building connections or activities. It is the antithesis of a festival like Sundance, which uses non-car-centric urban geography to add to its value proposition. But should Atlanta get Sundance, it could be a step in redeveloping the city for people over cars and parking.
Why is Atlanta so poorly designed?
Atlanta's biggest problem is that it is not accessible on foot. For decades, Atlanta has focused on building infrastructure for cars only. This has a lot to do with the city’s fraught history and racialized infrastructure. TL/DR: racism.
TL/DR: Atlanta is a poorly planned and designed city, but it wasn’t always that way. Racism, segregation, and Jim Crow led to decades of bad design, including massive highways, even larger parking lots, a de-emphasizing of historic preservation, the abandoning of the city’s former grid, and its public transit options have made the city a place you drive to your mailbox.
Atlanta, in 2024, is attempting to mend its terrible urban planning past. The city has moved from a top-down government-first approach to a free market first + financial incentive second strategy, relying on private development to implement a new urbanized city. And the results are mixed.
While some developments are prioritizing renovating existing properties, such as Ponce City Market, South Downtown, Norfolk Southern, and Underground Atlanta, others are trying to recreate microcities, such as Centennial Yards. At the same time, others are still building suburban shopping centers, such as Madison Yards.
Can Atlanta solve for what it doesn’t have—a great urban footprint?
For a city attempting to bring in the US’s most prominent film festival, a festival that’s 100% walkable and accessible 24/7, Atlanta will have to figure out how to replicate the most critical part of the festival—its planning.
Park City has most of its residential housing at the top or base of the mountain. Within the core town are several existing homes alongside new housing units, converted buildings, and mixed-use residences alongside other commercial buildings.
In Park City, nearly every portion of the core city is walkable, and most are ADA-friendly. Considering the needs of the Sundance Film Festival, where 90% of attendees typically walk multiple blocks to do everything from seeing a film to eating, dealmaking, networking, hosting off-site film screenings, filming internet content, and it all being accessible 24/7, any new location would have to meet these requirements. Then, be able to do so for ten consecutive days.
Atlanta’s political leaders and developers could follow this path by trying to re-invigorate portions of the city that would do best to recreate that Sundance feel, such as Downtown Atlanta, Midtown, and the West End.
7. Park City’s transit system and the needs of Sundance
Sundance is a festival designed so that 90% of its attendees do not have to move by car. Once arriving in Park City, all events, film screenings, and extracurriculars are accessible by foot or the public transit system.
Park City’s small transit service includes an 11-route bus service, a trolley system, sidewalks, private shuttles, cabs, free park-n-ride lots, 40 miles of bike lanes/pathways, and integrated micro-transit (paratransit, vans) services.
Park City Transit is a free bus system that manages to include residents and tourists, moving seamlessly through the town. This is in addition to a multi-modal mass transit that merges private and public modes. A resident or visitor to Park City can walk around 90% of the town without ever needing a car and could take the free city bus, paratransit vans, or skylift to other areas of the mountain. Private companies such as taxis, ride shares, ski lifts, and vans fill the remaining coverage gaps.
Park City’s transit system is a micro example of how Atlanta could move in its initiatives in the future. The system was built to better serve festival guests and tourists, and locals (many of whom are some of the wealthiest in the state) use it regularly. This has led to the transit agency seeking to expand its offerings for future capacity built around continuing growth.
Park City has homes around the town for year-round spending
Park City has focused on infill development to help revitalize the city, but for the other 355 days, Sundance is not operating its festival. This infill development strategy allows for various housing options combined with walkable streets and ample public transit, resulting in concentrated growth.
This growth has seen housing options in the town range from single-family homes to duplexes, mixed-use residential buildings, and various rental apartments. These housing options keep the businesses operational post-Sundance as local businesses have been able to have a steady base of customers year-round.
This increase in residential capacity has led to a rise in the city’s overall growth without expanding its footprint. Atlanta could see this as a way to grow without displacement and attract newer outside investors in the same way Sundance has.
Sundance could supercharge existing local transit efforts.
While the city, businesses, and civic leaders are all pushing to be ready for the 2026 World Cup, the Sundance Film Festival could be the push needed to keep going after the games are finished. Some projects pushing to be completed by June 2026 include completing the 17.9 miles of walking paths on the Atlanta BeltLine, completing the Summerhill BRT route, and renovating the Five Points MARTA station downtown. If Atlanta gets Sundance, it could be the next push to keep moving aggressively on transit-related projects.
Atlanta has several in-town transit initiatives currently on the board: the Summerhill BRT, Atlanta BeltLine, and Atlanta Streetcar to Ponce City Market expansion, alongside four new proposed in-fill MARTA stations. Nearly all of these projects intersect the most walkable portions of the city and are next to event centers, hotels, and existing MARTA stations.
You can read more on the MEGA MARTA map + history of transit before MARTA in my February 2024 newsletter: MEGA MARTA
Atlanta transit has always been attached with a stigma to it, but as the recent efforts since 2016’s More MARTA vote, BeltLine rail advocacy, and pro-transit expansion movements grow in the city, having Sundance could be the final push for a greater focus in delivering transit sooner than later. This could also lead to the benefit of having a system built for one event and used to supplement others and locals. It's a win-win.
The glass is half-full on transit in Atlanta.
However, the city has moved more aggressively to right some of these wrongs over the last twenty years, especially under two of the previous three mayors, former mayor Kasim Reed and current mayor Andre Dickens. Mayor Dickens is building upon Mayor Reed's pro-transit initiatives with expansions of the Atlanta Streetcar, greater embrace of the Atlanta BeltLine, Summerhill bus rapid transit (BRT) project, and expansion with four new stations.
Should Atlanta get Sundance, this could be the impetus for greater interior transit options and more levers for finding state or federal funding to be ready for another significant event, one tied to the third largest film industry in the US.
Atlanta is expanding its transit options at the right time.
Public transit and entirely walkable districts are necessary for a city like Atlanta. However, only a few city areas are viable, and even fewer across the metro. Sundance, a festival with ~90,000 people, will require a transit system to facilitate connection points with the festival and its foot traffic for ten days.
You can read more on the four new MARTA stations in my newsletter: 4 New MARTA stations are coming, but where?
Atlanta is preparing for a bigger moment: the 2026 World Cup. As a result, the city is getting aggressive in its development goals, including transit. Atlanta is seeing an uptick of new potential transit options on the horizon, such as four new MARTA lines, the renovation of Five Points Station, the completion of the Summerhill BRT line, and an extension of the Atlanta streetcar to Ponce City Market, in addition to the announcement of 17.9 miles of the Atlanta BeltLine’s loop being fully paved by 2026.
While it's unlikely the four new MARTA stations will be ready by 2026, a recurring event like Sundance could spur the construction of those projects so that at least one would be ready by 2027. Or at least a better plan for buses and paratransit routes to service the area where the festival would occur. In addition to a strategy for Uber/Lyft, hotel vans, scooters, e-bikes, and walking for tourists.
Despite this, Atlanta is still a great candidate as the potential home of Sundance should it decide to move on from Park City. The city has shown that it can make things happen to court large events (the 96’ Olympics and the upcoming 26’ World Cup) and will move things if there is an opportunity for new business interests.
Sundance could be the post-2026 impetus for faster movement on big-ticket items, which could also benefit the everyday Atlantan. While the city of Atlanta would potentially be the best fit for the festival, other locations across the state could provide an equal home for the festival.
Part Two: What would Sundance mean for Atlanta?
If Sundance leaves Utah, it should consider Atlanta, but it needs to improve a lot!
-KJW