The Summit County Council set a goal last year to approve 1,500 units of affordable housing within a decade, just before it began the process to develop county-owned land in Jeremy Ranch.
It chose Columbus Pacific Development as the builder for what’s called the Cline Dahle property, 30 acres next to Jeremy Ranch Elementary School.
The path forward will require both a rezone and the creation of a new zone, according to Councilmember Chris Robinson, one of the county leaders negotiating with the developer.
“So we have this target of building 1,500 units of affordable housing — we don't have a zone for affordable housing,” he said during the latest public discussion with the entire council March 25.
Columbus Pacific partner Tony Tyler argued creating a new zone, applying for a rezone and drawing up blueprints at the same time is expensive. And the county council reserves the right to vote “no” in the end, after an applicant has already invested millions in detailed plans.
“What it's effectively doing is it's frontloading a significant amount of cost, time and risk before you even get to the point where you go, ‘Yeah, we're close enough, and we're going to get there,’” Tyler told councilmembers.
The council has heard concerns about risk before, when it solicited developers’ opinions for the Cline Dahle property.
March 25, Tyler recommended changing county code to make the process cheaper and help mitigate risk.
That includes the county applying for a new zone, rather than Tyler’s company. Once that’s ready, he could bring forward a rezone application. The county council didn’t vote March 25. It will see proposed code changes at a future meeting.
As the discussion was winding down, Community Development Director Peter Barnes, the county’s top planner, asked the council to consider which kinds of landowners can afford to risk a rezone.
“Typically that there is some kind of guarantee that there’s something coming from the other end [of a rezone application]. In Summit County, that's not necessarily true,” he said.
Barnes says current procedures disincentivize regular landowners from proposing projects, so only well-financed and well-connected companies can afford it.
“The only projects you get tend to be large-scale, very well-organized, development-led projects,” Barnes said. “And when they hit a roadblock, we've seen what happens. There's a tendency to go elsewhere to get that approval.”
Councilmembers justified approving Dakota Pacific Real Estate’s Kimball Junction project last December by saying the developer would otherwise go over their heads to the Utah Legislature.
Lawmakers did pass a bill rezoning Dakota Pacific’s land after a citizen referendum threatened to block the project.
In Browns Canyon, Ivory Homes is proposing a new zone. It applied to the state to incorporate a town, which it framed as a backstop, but was too late. Its zoning application is expected to go before a planning commission in April.
On Cline Dahle, Tyler said he doesn’t think the risk issue requires a large-scale legislative solution, only minor changes to county code.
Multiple councilmembers said they want to ensure those tweaks won’t have unintended consequences elsewhere in Summit County.
Summit County and Columbus Pacific Development are financial supporters of KPCW.
