Heber City is redesigning its downtown park in hopes of making it a year-round destination for locals and visitors alike.
The city hired consultants to dive into locals’ preferences with open houses and a survey. The council took a close look at feedback from about 400 people at its May 5 meeting.
Architect Ryan Wallace said about 45% of the people surveyed thought the designs were on the right track and 36% did not like the concepts. The other 19% were somewhere in the middle.
“For some of the yeses, they said things like, ‘As a high schooler, I’d love to see a place like this where we could hang out,’” he said. “On the ‘no’ scale, we heard very strongly, ‘I don’t care about downtown being a destination for anyone else. I want this to be for Heber residents first.’”
Overall, the consultants said residents want a focus on green space and trees, unstructured gathering spaces like picnic pavilions and playgrounds, and upgrades to essentials like public restrooms.
They shared a “preferred master plan” with a larger lawn, an accessible playground and a smaller paved plaza.
Councilmember Sid Ostergaard said it will take some time to review all the survey results and recommendations.
“Thank you for listening to us and doing this public outreach,” he said. “This is very important that we’re to this stage on this project, so I’m excited for the next steps. Give us at least two weeks to look and study, because there’s a lot.”
Councilmember Yvonne Barney encouraged locals to reach out to city leaders with feedback.
A few residents shared their opinions of the plans Tuesday night, mostly negative.
Allison Salisbury said she’s worried about parking. She thinks most locals want the park to stay more or less the same.
Alexandra Fullmer suggested the city rely on development in the North Village to provide community programming.
“With The Slope to the north, you know, they’re building their own entire commerce area, restaurant area, social hangout area,” she said. “That’s going to be a significant amount of competition that we just don’t have the budget for. So, maybe let them do all the work.”
Others said they think an ice ribbon is a bad idea because they don’t want to compete with Midway’s skating rink.
The city council will discuss the plans again at its meeting May 19.
For more information about the consultants' findings, click here.
Heber City is a financial supporter of KPCW.
