More growth is on the way to Wasatch County, including several hotels to be built on land controlled by the Military Installation Development Authority and in Midway.
Grabau said as many as three hotels could have building permits for MIDA land by the end of this year in addition to the Grand Hyatt already under construction.
And at Midway’s Homestead Resort, a planned Marriott Autograph Hotel is applying for a $45 million loan through the C-PACE Act – that’s the Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy Act – to finance some of the project.
C-PACE financing is intended for energy-efficient and renewable improvements to commercial properties. The Marriott applicant says it’ll use the loan for aspects including plumbing and HVAC systems and seismic upgrades.
“Wasatch County authorizes the utilization of C-PACE as a financing structure, and we’re included in disclosure information,” Grabau said. “But it’s actually the property owners themselves that are responsible for issuing and repaying the debt, so it’s not a liability to the county itself.”
Some protest the growth is too fast for the small-town agricultural county. But Grabau said Wasatch County is trying to buck statewide trends by taking a more conservative approach to expansion than some of its neighbors.
“From the state level, they’re highly driven to incentivize development,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is make sure that we’re getting the right type of development and getting the important public benefits that come along with those developments.”
Affordability concerns and worker housing make managing growth a challenge. Grabau pointed to state policy as a limiting factor in how the county can shape development.
“The state legislature seems, I think, to have a little bit of a disconnect, in that they say they want affordable housing options, but are limiting the tools that local governments have to be able to address that,” he said. “We can offer incentives for it, but we can’t require it, which is a tool that we had in the past and has recently gone away.”
The Wasatch County Council will consider the hotel’s C-PACE application at its meeting Wednesday night, Feb. 7.
Also on the agenda is a pre-application for public infrastructure districts comprising 750 acres near Hideout. The developer wants to build a fire station, restaurants, a spa and a public ski lift within the proposed PID. The land is part of the 2,500-acre Benloch Ranch development under construction in that area.
Wednesday’s county council meeting begins at 4 p.m. Residents can attend in person or online.
