OREM — Orem City is proposing some major changes along State Street in an effort to encourage and direct future growth in the area.

Over the last several months, the city has been creating its Orem State Street Corridor Master Plan, which would change the face of businesses, residences and even the corridor itself over the next 25 years. Since much of the corridor was developed in the 1970s and ‘80s, the city has experienced heavy population growth.

Between 1990 and 2000, the Provo-Orem area saw population growth at a rate of 39.9, and between 2000 and 2010 the growth percentage rate remained fairly steady at 39.8, according to the Brookings Institute. The school’s Metropolitan Policy Program ranked Orem-Provo as the third-fastest growing areas in the nation.

“I think that we can create a place that people can own. Right now, State Street is very utilitarian,” said Brandon Stocksdale, the city’s long-range planner. “People use it — you can go get groceries there, you can get dry cleaning, you can buy a lawnmower, you can do whatever you need to do on State Street — but it’s not a place that people identify with. When you have family come from out of town, you don’t take them to State Street. But we can create this place that becomes Orem. Where people say, ‘This is our downtown, this is our home.’ It’s exciting to be part of that, it’s exciting to see people start to feel this sense of pride and ownership over what this place could be.”

The proposal

The Orem State Street corridor is a critical area for the city’s commerce and transportation, according to City Manager Jamie Davidson. Between 35,000 and 50,000 cars travel along the state road each day, offering prime visibility and commercial opportunity to the businesses that line its pavement.

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“The State Street corridor, all the businesses, the homes and the commercial uses along the corridor have always been an important and critical part of us as a community. A number of years ago we looked at the corridor itself and were concerned about the longer-term sustainability of the corridor and what we can do to enhance it,” Davidson said.

Since last year, the city has been creating a redevelopment plan that would give the buildings a facelift, accommodate such traffic while also making the north-south corridor more accessible to pedestrians.

“One of the things that we’re looking to do is to not just make this a vehicular corridor,” he said. “We would like this to be a corridor where you see more than cars, you see people who feel safe and comfortable walking down the street, you see people who are comfortable riding a bike. We have vehicles that are going 40 plus mph along this corridor, and many people don’t feel comfortable walking directly adjacent to vehicles that are traveling at that speed.”

The city — in partnership with UDOT, UTA, Provo City and Mountainland Association of Governments — is still trying to figure out exactly what that will look like. The proposal includes suggestions for landscaping that would bring buildings closer to the road, landscaping that would separate pedestrian and cycling lanes from the main thoroughfare, adding mid-block crossings to the east-west blocks in some areas and light rail.

“What I think we’re looking at is that maybe not every trip, everywhere, all the time, has to be made in a car,” Stocksdale said. “And if we can give people more options, that really helps everybody. It can reduce congestion, it can help improve access and it can help improve development. Light rail is a massive redevelopment tool.”

A light rail transportation system would take advantage of the development nodes the city has proposed. The nodes would break down the five-mile stretch from University Parkway to 1600 North into five areas with different focuses and goals. In heavily trafficked and highly visible areas of State Street like the portion near University Parkway, retail and office space would be prioritized. Further north where the road sees fewer cars, the city may put an emphasis on residential redevelopment.

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The challenges

Davidson and Stocksdale both acknowledge the biggest challenge to implementing the plan is that the city does not own much property along State Street, putting the burden of redevelopment on business and property owners.

The city is looking at various incentives for participation in redevelopment, though those incentives have yet to be determined. Davidson and Stocksdale hope the redevelopment will be a collaboration between willing businesses and the city and its partners, which have been contributing both at the discussion table and financially to the proposal.

“This vision that we are developing needs to be a shared vision. It needs to be something that merchants, business owners, those who have a vested interest already in the corridor are willing and wanting to buy into (and) as a result, they’re willing to reinvest their own resources in helping achieve this plan into the future,” Davidson said.

Continued public feedback

Along the way, the city has opened the plan to public feedback, including at five open houses and online through Mindmixer.

City officials said they were glad to see people getting involved, making suggestions online and attending the open houses.

“I think a lot of people don’t like State Street the way it is now or they that realize something needs to change but they don’t know what it is,” Stocksdale said. “So being able to provide these ideas to the public and get the feedback that we have, and to see the excitement now about it, is exciting to see.”

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