Olympia Hills Development (Salt Lake City, Provo, South Jordan: apartments, new home, calculation)

[Geo-Aggie]

I still like to keep tabs on development and redevelopment in Salt Lake County. I read in the Tribune about this proposed development in Southwest Salt Lake County this afternoon:

Olympia Hills Proposal for nearly 8,800 new homes and apartments in southwest Salt Lake County project OK’d despite drawing fire

I think it sounds appealing. It'll certainly be a departure from the soulless sprawl generally associated with Southern Salt Lake County. 938 acres with 8800 units is about 0.1 acres per unit. I know in most of Utah people would shudder at this kind of density, but I think it sounds fantastic and will really make the SW part of the county relevant and desirable to younger people.

What are your thoughts?

[Wata-Z]

Lots of the people up in arms about it possibly changing the community's "way of life" and crowding local infrastructure often have no basis to complain. I swear it's almost always the people that decided to have 4+ children that get up in arms meanwhile they're the driving factor in the current undersupply of affordable housing.

I think over a large trajectory this will make Salt Lake City's culture more evenly spread throughout all of Salt Lake County with the increased density, which I see as a net positive assuming there are viable public transit connections and walkability implemented within its development. The one thing that surprises me is that anyone would be willing to live so close to the eyesore that is the copper mine. Here's the area that's being cited, which, from what I understand, is currently unincorporated:


It could prove difficult to connect this to the existing transit infrastructure given its alignment.

EDIT: If you're curious about the more concrete plans, you can check out this pdf from the Salt Lake County Zoning Meeting. The docs were surprisingly difficult to find:
https://www.herriman.org/wp-document...oZoningMtg.pdf
https://slco.org/WorkArea/DownloadAs...?id=2147582609

[Chango]

People on the Wasatch Front had better get used to high density development... there's not much open land left and the population IS going to double (at least) over the next 20-30 years...

[ksman]

They might need another bar or two to go with it

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/06/...de-them-do-it/

[SWFL_Native]

Will be a disaster for west side infrastructure that is already a relative disaster. There needs to be a 215 of the West that connects with i15 and i80 to the north and Lehi/Provo to the south. Bangerter is not it and they have been taking about the Mountain View corridor for a decade with little improvement. Going east / west on the west side near commute hours is a no go.

[old fed]

https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics...cils-approval/

some unhappy folks i guess.

[SWFL_Native]

I agree in theory that higher density is the way to go to solve the housing shortage problem. The issue here is that it's a highly inefficient distribution of people geographically. The density needs to be developed near where people work or need to be.... Downtown, the U, and Provo/Lehi are where the jobs and education are. That is what is bringing people into Utah so we need to align them in that manner.

Adding 30k people South of the copper mine is not doing any favors to our transit infrastructure. We need for true urbanization to happen not an urban sprawl.

[Beernik]

As a former Copperton resident, I can tell you there are two things that have directly led to this:

1) the County Council never adopted the West Bench Master Plan we, and the other west side communities, were working on around 2006. Even though this area is outside of it, failure to have any west side development plan means “anything goes”.

2) the Metro Township bill reduced the west side Townships to just their developed boundaries. Communities, such as the Southwest Communtiy where this development is located, were completely eliminated. There are no community councils or town councils that stand between the developers and the County Council.

A side affect of the Metro Township bill is the County Council is going to approve anything that increases the unincorporated County tax base. Stabilizing the tax base was the whole reason for passing the Metro Township bill. But this won’t last too long. Because another side affect of the Metro Township bill is that they will either eventually annex into Herriman, South Jordan, or they will incorporate into their own city. Copperton is the closest Metro Township and they aren’t going to have their 900 voices diluted by this development’s 33,000.

I wouldn’t worry too much about them clogging up Bangerter or 215. They will head north on MVC & 111, which will dump them out in Magna & West Valley. If you take 201, expect that to get worse. East & West traffic in the southwest corner of the valley will be the hardest hit with people trying to find places to shop and dine.

[SWFL_Native]

Hooray McAdams vetoed the bill! Good to see a person take feedback from his constituents and represent the people and not his pocketbook.



Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams vetoes Olympia Hills development proposal | KUTV

[Beernik]

It’s a pure politicial calculation. McAdams is running in district 4. He can’t beat Mia Love if he doesn’t have the southwest Salt Lake County suburbs. He’s punting the decision until after the election.