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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's capital city could soon be growing in a new way.
The Salt Lake City Council voted Tuesday to adopt a resolution to express "intent to pursue" annexation of unincorporated parts of the Northpoint area, located by the city's northwest boundary. It's the first step in a process to add hundreds of unincorporated acres of land near 2200 West between Salt Lake City International Airport and Davis County after the City Council finalized a plan last year to corral growth challenges in the remote part of the city.
"We've already had several meetings with our county counterparts, so we know they're supportive of the plan," Salt Lake City Council Chairwoman Victoria Petro told KSL.com on Thursday. "The property owners are the next phase. They get to contest it if they don't think it's a good idea; they get to voice their concerns."
It's a major update to the revised Northpoint Small Area Plan that the City Council approved in November. The plan was created to handle the area's recent growth problems.
Addressing Northpoint's problem
Northpoint could be described as the "final frontier" of development in Salt Lake City, Petro says. It had remained primarily vacant and undeveloped until recently, retaining some of the last agricultural land that used to exist before an influx of skyscrapers and single-family homes began sprouting up over the past century to meet the region's growth.
However, it started feeling the same development pressures as every other part of the city over the past two decades. Commercial businesses started swooping in and buying the land from its historic owners in a process that turned the area into a new form of the Wild West.
Salt Lake City leaders had created an area plan in 2000 and started to consider some revisions to address the growth before Petro was elected in 2021, but it was still a work in progress. There weren't many zoning limitations, so businesses were allowed to construct massive warehouses up to 1 million square feet in size. And once one massive warehouse was approved, other companies followed suit.
It became a nightmare for people still living in the area. As the City Council discussed a plan to address it last year, resident Denise Payne said 2200 West has been turned into "a terrifying and dangerous road" because of all the construction happening.
"(Construction vehicles) shake our homes every day," she said at the time. "We can't live there. Our quality of life is gone."
The City Council approved the new small area plan in November. The measure controls redevelopment and limits warehouse sizes so the people of Northpoint can continue to live the way they did before the construction, while also protecting the nearby Great Salt Lake wetlands.
Addressing the plan's issue
One problem exists, though. Not all the land is in Salt Lake City.
The area is an "absolute constellation of county-owned and city-owned properties" as a result of odd land arrangements over time, Petro explained. It makes it difficult for the city to enforce the new plan. But by annexing the unincorporated area, the city can wrangle the land together and make it easier to manage growth.
"This annexation is an attempt for us to clean that up, for us to fix those peninsulas and islands that got created," she said. "(It would) bring them together under the auspices of the city that will primarily serve them."
All of the new land would enter the city as agricultural land, and it wouldn't impact the city's budget, city planners wrote in a memo to the City Council. The city would collect new property taxes by acquiring the land, but it would also be required to spend more on services.
Tuesday's vote starts the process to make it happen. The City Council agreed to hold a public hearing on the matter, which will be held during its May 7 meeting. Property owners in the unincorporated areas can protest the annexation now through May 7. The measure fails if private land owners representing at least 50% of the land area and 50% of the land value submit protests.
If enough owners agree to the measure, the City Council would have to adopt an ordinance to approve the annexation. Salt Lake County and North Salt Lake would have to consent to this measure, according to city documents. The city would then have to file a few documents to the lieutenant governor's office to finalize the whole process.
It's unclear how the whole process could go. While other government entities are supportive of the efforts, some residents in the area once tried to be annexed into nearby North Salt Lake. Those efforts ultimately fizzled. Petro said she's also aware of at least one property owner who would "prefer" the Davis County city.
Yet she hopes the city can go through the process smoothly.
"I am curious to see how this all shakes out," she said. "It feels a little bit like we're on an execrable movement toward change in that area, so what I'm really hopeful for is that (the plan) puts us in a more strategic position to manage what happens up there. ... This gives us a better chance at defense, to protect the constituents who are out there."
