Park City Ink

Tattoo parlor makes mark in resort town
By Todd Hollingshead
The Salt Lake Tribune
12/13/2006

PARK CITY - They pay a lot more rent for a lot less space, but Jack
Eldredge and Alyssa Tippetts couldn't be happier with their tattoo
shop's new home.

They ski in the mornings, take breaks in a hotel hot tub and gaze out
at a "more friendly" environment.

Not that their journey from a 1,800-square-foot setup in an Orem strip
mall to a 300-square-foot nook in Park City's Treasure Mountain Inn
didn't have some bumps. But now that they have arrived and business at
Park City Ink is promising, they see the wisdom in the move.

"One of those blessings in disguise type of things, I guess," Tippetts
says.

Six months ago, neither Tippetts nor Eldredge would have guessed they
would be closing up their bustling shop on Orem's State Street for a
cozy spot at the top of Park City's historic Main Street.

Then Noah Webster Academy - a K-6 school chartered for 525 students and
developed by legislators Jim Ferrin, R-Orem, and Mike Morley, R-Spanish
Fork - announced plans to rebuild the old Storehouse Market behind
their Orem shop.

Eldredge and Tippetts grew unsettled. Not only did they think having a
school next to a tattoo and piercing parlor was inappropriate, but they
also knew county regulations prohibited such shops within 600 feet of a
school. And these two buildings were even closer. They shared a fence.

In the end, the Utah County Health Department decided the two could
live as neighbors, and the shop was granted a variance. But the dispute
damaged business and Eldredge and Tippetts worried that their parlor
wouldn't last.

So the two sold their homes in Mapleton, closed Quality Tattoo and Body
Piercing in September and started looking for a new location.

"I had a shop in Utah County for 10 years and it was very lucrative,"
Eldredge says. "We abandoned everything in Utah County for that charter
school - but for the better."

Life is better for them in the state's premier ski resort town - more
expensive, but more relaxed. And for a bonus: They say Park City Ink is
the only tattoo parlor in town.

Eldredge and Tippetts like to focus on those positives, but the Orem
dispute still gnaws at them.

"It was cheap politics," Eldredge recalls. "I thought those regulations
should have been in place for a reason."

Health Department spokesman Lance Madigan maintains his staff did not
pressure the shop owners to leave. "We hope we weren't the cause they
felt they needed to move," Madigan says. "It was kind of unfortunate
how the whole thing played out."

Ferrin argues the school and the tattoo shop could have coexisted. He
notes crews erected a wall between the operations and that school
officials launched a traffic plan to keep students from wandering
toward State Street.

"Had the tattoo parlor stayed right there," he says, "they wouldn't
have been affected by the school, neither would the school have been
affected by them."

That's all in the past for Eldredge and Tippetts. Their only worry now
is whether to go skiing before heading to work.

"At the end of the day," Eldredge says, "I think we did the right
thing." From: http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_4836367

See also:

http://www.parkcityink.com/
http://noahwebsteracademy.org/
http://www.treasuremountaininn.com/
http://www.co.utah.ut.us/Dept/Health/index.asp

--
Curt
http://curtjames.com/