Report on Feb 3 Town Hall Meeting

For those who weren't able to make it this morning, want to share a few of the highlights from today's D4 Town Hall Meeting featuring the ENVISIONING of a CITY CENTER for Cottonwood Heights.

21 people were in attendance.

We started off talking about the Tavaci annexation petition. There was a resounding opposition in the room to the petition now under consideration by Cottonwood Heights City Council for having this exclusive neighborhood located on the steep slope northeast of the entrance to Big Cottonwood Canyon annexed into our city. Primarily, the opposition rests in the fact that the initial developer annexed out of Cottonwood Heights in order to build without meeting our more strenuous code. Now, many fear, that annexation will mean that the taxpayers of Cottonwood Heights will ultimately pick up the tab for the maintanence and repair of their expensive private roadway one day if annexation occurs.

I conferred with our city attorney to see if there is an iron-clad way to prohibit our public works department from ever taking on the O&M (operation and maintanence costs), and he indicated that once annexed into CH, it is a matter of policy, which could be changed by future elected representatives even if we initially approve the annexation with no road maintanence.

As we turned to the subject of the new city center, the Citizen Committee Chair Randy Whitehead appeared in the room and was able join in briefly before leaving for another obligation. He'd lent me a wonderful CH map he's made that features suggested Neighborhood Byway routes and suggested round-about locations. Both of these elements could be part of envisioning our city with a greater sense of community, safer streets, healthier citizens and encouragement of residents to access the city center walking and rolling in addition to the option of driving. I brought out that my city center vision also includes a "Main Street" area that is described in CH's 2017 Fort Union Blvd Master Plan.

Many participants wanted to know the timeline for the Citizen Committee's process and final recommendations to the city council, as well as for when the final plans and building of the city center would begin. Randy indicated that his committee should produce their recommendation in four months from now. There is no established timeline for the design, ground breaking or construction. Truly, the designation of how the ten acres will be developed has not been established.

Sadly, Kayla Lengyel, one of our two D4 Citizen Committee representatives was ill and unable to attend. Gordon Walker, our other D4 Citizen Committee rep, shared a number of committee developments as well as information from his extensive background in housing, homelessness and housing financing. Here follows some of his comments:

·      In my opinion, "no one wants change." He indicated most committee members and residents seem to want similar height, another grocery store and local restaurants like Carl's Cafe in the space

·      He mentioned the $1,000,000 grant awarded to CH by GOEO Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity https://business.utah.gov based on including housing within the project

·      His personal interest to include locally-owned restaurants, roof-top dining and a bell tower of some sort

·      He shared a map of Hillside Plaza with "to scale puzzle pieces" of the proposed area. Each piece represented things like Millcreek Commons, grocery store (size of Holladay Harmon's), small restaurant, townhouse, etc.  The idea is to play around with placing different pieces within the 10-acre space to get ideas for usage.

·      "Town homes are a highly inefficient use of space."

So many meeting participants contributed great ideas, comments and questions. Here are just a few:

·      Jeff Chatelain admonished to be careful about too much parking.

·      Dennis Iverson recommended that what citizens need is a graphic video that shows a vision for the city and the city center. As I contemplated this excellent suggestion, it came to mind to put something together that includes elements from two of our city's adopted plans -- 2005 General Plan and 2017 Fort Union Blvd as well as things learned from the December 2023 familiarization trip that the mayor, Randy Whitehead and I took to the suburban city north of Indianapolis, Carmel. Carmel, pronounced like the candy, was incorporated thirty years ago when it was approximately the same size in geography and population as Cottonwood Heights. Through a vision from its mayor 28 years ago to take their suburban sprawl/strip mall/non-descript bedroom community and turn it into a European-style, beautified place where traffic flowed well and streets were safe and walkable; where through public/private partnerships (yes, even including financial partnerships with their state department of transportation), Form Based Code FBC, grants, etc. in twenty years they accomplished the impossible -- a beautiful, walkable, enriched city. 150 corporations have chosen to locate themselves there. Annual city tax revenues exceed $300M! Wow. What CH could do with a robust tax base even a fraction of that!

·      A few participants expressed interest in a limited footprint space, strategically located within the 10-acres for a "tower-like" five-story-ish multi-use building. That is, retail/restaurants/services on ground level and multi-family housing above.

·      Will McCarvill mentioned that CH has one of the lowest property tax rates in Salt Lake County. If there is sincere interest in creating a walkable community, are we willing to pay more in taxes to get it?

·      There was discussion about re-grading the gradually sloping 10-acres in order to possibly have some heights without disturbing views for surrounding residents.

·      A woman from the Millennial generation wanted participants to ponder the difficulty of attaining home ownership for her generation. She favored smaller, more affordable housing within the project, and also brought up her desire to see CH implement the ability of a home-owner to acquire a business license to run short term rentals in their home as a way of managing today's hefty mortgages associated with high house prices.

Participants were civil, respectful, upbeat. Want to commend everyone present for making this a meaningful and inspiring morning!

As you can see after giving you a flavor of how the meeting went, it was time well spent.

A recording of the meeting will be posted this upcoming week. Stay tuned.