The Utah Department of Transportation originally planned to announce where it will build the Heber Valley bypass by winter 2023, then by the following spring, then by the end of 2024. Now the agency says the soonest it will choose a route is sometime next year.
That’s left some building and conservation plans on hold, most recently a development envisioned for the intersection of U.S. 40 and River Road. It would create hundreds of condos and hotel rooms, plus outdoor amenities. The developer has applied to annex the land into Heber City.
But city leaders haven’t determined how to move forward because the land sits where two possible bypass routes could go.
At a Heber City Council meeting Tuesday, Sept. 17, Council Members Scott Phillips and Sid Ostergaard reported they and the developer had met with UDOT the day before.
“All of my fears were put at ease,” Phillips said. “They don’t really say much, but they did say that approving this project would not hinder or impede their current studies at all.”
But Council Member Aaron Cheatwood was less reassured.
“Why aren’t they here tonight?” he asked. “Why aren’t they here saying this is not going to cause these problems? Because I worry that when it comes back to the council again, that they’re going to, I’m sorry for this, but that they’re going to change their story again tomorrow.”
He and other city leaders, including Mayor Heidi Franco and Council Member Yvonne Barney, said while they trusted the council members who attended the meeting, they wanted UDOT officials to speak publicly and transparently about the process, instead of in closed meetings.
Franco noted while UDOT’s studies might not be affected, that didn’t rule out problems down the road.
“Their studies are separate from the actual routes,” she said.
And Barney asked why UDOT was responding to a potential development much differently than it did to a potential conservation easement.
“You have a great project,” she told the developer. “But at the same time, people who are saying, ‘this is my land, I would like to continue farming it, my family wants to farm it’ – that suddenly is the biggest, ‘oh my gosh, UDOT can’t do anything,’ and that really bothers me.”
The next step in the annexation process is a public hearing. That’s likely to happen during a city council meeting in October.
