Larry H. Miller Real Estate and Ivory Homes’ three-year effort to plan a town-sized development in Hoytsville stalled over the summer.
Hoytsville farming families who can’t get by on agriculture anymore — but don’t want an expensive, sprawling subdivision — entrusted the developers with their land.
But planning the so-called Cedar Crest Village got granular. And the developer, the county and the public got frustrated, planners told KPCW.
Oct. 28, the project resurfaced a few miles north. Larry H. Miller Real Estate introduced itself to the Coalville City Council to talk about sewer infrastructure, and annexing its land to the south.
“We would love to start a process,” Larry H. Miller Real Estate President Brad Holmes said, “to try and really understand what type of appetite there might be for this.”
It’s been three months since Summit County Community Development Director Peter Barnes said the developers spoke with his department in any official capacity.
“We're kind of curious and bemused,” the county’s top planning official told KPCW. “Sometimes we're not aware of everything that's occurring on the other side of the table, what other interests the developer might have, what their timetables are.”
But, Barnes said, Larry H. Miller does need to make decisions about budgeting for sewer very soon.
Don Sargent is Coalville’s community development director, and he sits on the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission, which was reviewing the proposal before it went underground.
Sargent said Holmes came before the Coalville City Council after meeting privately with him and Mayor Mark Marsh.
According to Sargent, the meeting began with how to handle Cedar Crest’s wastewater, and whether the development could connect to Coalville’s sewer.
“That was a good discussion point, saying, ‘Maybe we ought to have this discussion with the council to kind of see what the support would be for doing that, or the flavor for partnering with Larry H. Miller, in providing sewer service to that development,” Sargent said at the Oct. 28 city meeting. “Obviously, dovetailed with that, is the annexation question.”
City Councilmember Lynn Wood said recent resident feedback has shown Coalville is willing to consider it.
“I think there is an appetite for good annexation, with caution,” Wood told Holmes. “I think if we were to go forward, I think we would have to look at our ordinances. I think it would be required that we would need to annex that piece in, if we were going to provide water services or sewer services. So that's definitely part of the equation.”
The Cedar Crest Village was originally the idea of about two dozen Hoytsville families to transform land they can no longer farm the way previous generations did.
Members of those families were on a subcommittee with county planners, who had created a special village zone in Summit County code to process the development application.
There is no such village zone in Coalville City code.
Holmes told the city council Larry H. Miller’s approach has been to listen to locals.
“I think there's been good. There's been challenges. There's been everything that happens when you're in the land development business and you acquire. We're okay with that,” Holmes said. “But we're anxious to try and find solutions, to try and be responsible in how we develop and to understand resident concerns, resident needs, town, city needs.”
Coalville needs money. The city council held a special training on annexation law and processes Sept. 12 with Mark Christensen from the Utah League of Cities and Towns.
He is also the city manager for Saratoga Springs and a former Park City employee.
“40 years ago, [Park City was] in the same economic position that you guys are probably looking at,” he said Sept. 12. “I remember looking at the tax records and the values that they were bringing in, and they were hurting.”
Coalville’s tight margins come at the same time city employees say their workload is increasing.
That includes Sargent, the only planner on the city’s payroll.
Councilmembers Wood and Louise Willoughby expressed reservations at the council’s Nov. 12 meeting about whether they have enough staff to process the Cedar Crest application.
Larry H. Miller Real Estate has asked to come back before the city council Monday, Dec. 9, to further discuss the Cedar Crest Village development.
