The council and the developer spoke against the backdrop of Senate Bill 84, which passed the Utah legislature last week. Language in SB84, which originated in House Bill 446, seems to give Dakota Pacific the rights to build its mixed-use development in Kimball Junction without council approval.
Council Chair Roger Armstrong asked the developers specifically if their lobbyists wrote the underlying bill, HB446. CEO Marc Stanworth answered.
“We do work with lobbyists, just as the county does. Our lobbyists did have contact with HB44—I don't even remember—446,” Stanworth said. “In terms of drafting the legislation, that was really in a push from the drafting legislator, from the author and legislator—with input. Obviously, it had to do with our project, Kimball Junction. They needed input, so there was communication there.”
The other question that kept bubbling up at the work session Wednesday was whether Dakota Pacific Real Estate can make changes to its latest development proposal.
It seems like the answer is no—the developer said making changes to the current plan would be too complex and a public meeting was not a productive forum for those sorts of negotiations.
The rest of the work session boiled down to a debate about Summit County’s affordable housing needs. Some on the council worried including too many market rate units in the proposal would create a need for more services, more workers and consequently more affordable housing.
Armstrong used the metaphor of digging a hole.
“We have this hole,” Armstrong said. “You get this to put into that hole, and when you do that, it's going to leave a hole.”
But Stanworth emphasized what he called economic diversity, saying there’s a strong need for diversity in the Kimball Junction area.
“We're talking about an economic diversity hole, we're talking about a walkable community hole, we're talking about a where-do-seniors-live-hole,” Stanworth said. “If we focus on one hole, at the expense of all the other holes, I think that's a disingenuous argument.”
The council and the developer found themselves at an impasse for most of the meeting. Multiple councilmembers asked Dakota Pacific how willing they were to make changes to their proposal.
Council Vice Chair Malena Stevens asked about mandating owners use units as their primary residences to no avail. Councilmember Tonja Hanson asked Stanworth if he could live with 500 units instead of 727, if that would pencil out. But he said it wouldn’t.
Based on the ratios that we have right now of affordable and other [market rate] ones, that is what pencils,” Stanworth said.
The latest development proposal remains unchanged heading into public hearings over the next couple of weeks. The council has scheduled public hearings for March 1 and 8. It is scheduled to vote on Dakota Pacific’s application March 15.
