Plans for Jordanelle Ridge include 5,700 new homes and over 5,000 acres of open space in northern Heber City.
How to ensure the long-term protection of about 2,000 of those acres has been debated for months by Heber City and Wasatch County leaders, open space experts and the Jordanelle Ridge developer.
Summit Land Conservancy CEO Cheryl Fox said her team first met with local leaders and the developer back in 2021.
In the intervening years, elected officials and the developer decided to create an unconventional open space agreement to be enforced by local governments, rather than third-party experts. But now, the land might be stewarded by Summit Land Conservancy after all.
Fox said an accredited land trust is the best option available for protecting open space in perpetuity. That’s because the land trust is designed to be consistent, even as elected leaders or neighbors come and go.
“We have systems set up for institutional memory,” she said. “When we develop our agreements – the conservation easement document itself – it’s based on best practices all across the country.”
Fox said if Summit Land Conservancy holds the Jordanelle Ridge easement, it will monitor and document the quality of the land and ensure that specific “conservation values,” such as wildlife habitat and viewshed, are protected.
She said it typically costs the nonprofit about $100,000 to put an easement in place.
“That is everything from drafting the easement [to] preparing a baseline document, which is a catalog of the property today,” she said.
It also includes funding for a staff member to visit the land every year to ensure the terms of the easement are honored.
Purchasing the land is not necessary in this case.
Jordanelle Ridge developer Mike Bradshaw expressed frustration at an October 2025 meeting that plans were being revisited after years of discussion.
Bradshaw’s team has requested a list of conditions if local leaders opt for a third-party easement. The developer says it will not pay for the easement or to maintain the open space and planned public trails.
Heber City Manager Matt Brower said the city and county are still working out the details for the proposed easement, including who will pay for what.
“Who would pay that, whether it be the county or be a partnership with the city – that’s part of the terms that we have to negotiate with the county on the conservation easement and the funding,” he said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” March 2.
Heber City and Wasatch County leaders discussed the Jordanelle Ridge plans at a joint meeting Feb. 24.
At that meeting, county manager Dustin Grabau said leaders were working on an “outline of a conservation easement.”
The two councils set an end-of-April goal for further discussions.
Heber City and Summit Land Conservancy are financial supporters of KPCW.
