“LOOK CLOSELY,” reads an advertisement in December 1991 editions of The Park Record above a map of the Browns Canyon area. “This is a Treasure MAP!”
The developer Ivory Homes recently showed eastern Summit County planning commissioners a similar ad from a 1970s edition of The Salt Lake Tribune.
The treasure wasn’t silver; it was real estate. Now, the Garff and Rogers families are looking to develop some of their Browns Canyon holdings with as many as 3,000 homes over time.
Capitalizing on those land values is nothing new, Ivory Homes representatives told the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission June 18.
“We’re coming to the fruition of what they were advertising in the ’70s,” Ivory Development President Chris Gamvroulas said.
Old ads cite the “booming recreation industry in Utah’s Summit County” and the “proposed Jordanelle Reservoir” as reasons to invest in Browns Canyon.
“In this area, you've got all these 40-, 60-, 80-acre parcels. These were all parceled off and subdivided by the Garff and Rogers families starting in the ’70s,” Gamvroulas said. “It is how they paid off their note on the larger piece: They purchased 15,000 acres. They have about 7,000, roughly, left.”
But it’s still mostly cows and zoned as such. Ivory is in the process of negotiating a rezone with Summit County on the families’ behalf.
Eastern Summit County planning commissioners have found the process unorthodox thus far.
Ivory first wants Summit County to create a new zoning category for Browns Canyon. If that’s approved, the developer would ask for that zoning on about 600 acres.
And only after that would Ivory be able to apply for building approvals.
Planning commissioner Alex Peterson wants to make sure the developer, the public and the commission he chairs are all on the same page.
“We got a horse and a cart here, and I understand — if we're looking at it, you’v got to look at the horse and the cart together,” he said June 18. “But … first we're being asked whether we want to approve a new process.”
The public hearing on Ivory’s proposal initially scheduled for July 2 was cancelled, but the item was still on the agenda for a discussion after other business at 6 p.m.
There will be public hearings in the future at both the planning commission and Summit County Council, which has the final say.
