The development is expected to include hotels, retail, a pedestrian plaza and hundreds of homes across U.S. 40 from Deer Valley’s Jordanelle Express Gondola.
County planning director Doug Smith said leaders came up with the Jordanelle Specially Planned Area back in 2002. They envisioned the land as the place for a year-round resort, with this 86-acre section as its heart.
He told the county council at a meeting Sept. 3 every project around the Jordanelle Reservoir received a target amount of density in the early 2000s. In the case of Deer Cove, that’s 865 residential units. Along with the target density came a strict set of design rules.
“I’ve had some comments from some people about, ‘Why do you regulate so much in the JSPA?’” he said. “I mean, we have color palette, we have materials, we have architecture, we have all the common elements like the street signs and streetlights. It’s because the developers came to us in 2002 and said, ‘We want a plan that has all these things that are consistent.’”
On Wednesday, the council took a look at the master road plans for Deer Cove, including sidewalks, trails, a central plaza and snow storage.
For Councilmember Luke Searle, construction traffic was a top concern.
“The truck traffic that uses the Jordanelle Parkway is quite cumbersome, and a 40,000-pound truck speeding down the road as a kid’s trying to cross the street is going to be a bigger impact,” he said. “So, is that something that we can ask of them – to have a construction traffic route mitigation plan?”
The council also reviewed design elements, like using the same type of steel for everything from bike racks to trash cans throughout the village. Those standards were approved in 2019.
Bus shelters are another part of the plans. The county will work with High Valley Transit to provide a public transportation connection to Deer Cove.
The development will fall within the Military Installation Development Authority’s “project area” in Wasatch County. The state agency partnered with Wasatch County to construct a hotel with rooms set aside for military Morale, Welfare and Recreation. In addition to its military projects in the county, MIDA is involved in numerous other developments in East Village and the Jordanelle Basin.
Jason Keller, a representative from Deer Cove developer Mission Pacific, told the county council his company has worked closely with MIDA to plan the village roads.
“We spent the last couple of years doing extensive land planning, as well as looking at several alternatives to establish this road layout,” he said. “We’ve also been in close coordination with MIDA to develop a plan to construct the proposed infrastructure we’re looking at tonight.”
The county council unanimously approved the preliminary road plan plats, with the conditions that staff reach out to High Valley Transit and develop a construction traffic mitigation plan.
