Provo mayor defends Vesper Amphitheater as Vivint founder, others express concerns

PROVO — As developers revise their plans for a large music venue in Provo Canyon, the mayor of Provo is urging people to let the process move forward.

"We are at the beginning phases. Nothing is set in stone," said Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins. "We have been listening to the concerns of residents, and we have been making sure that those concerns get written in to the development agreement as much as we can."

The proposal to build Vesper Amphitheater at 6622 N. U.S. 189 has run into opposition over concerns about traffic, noise and preserving the area. Some neighbors are worried about what a large venue will do to the canyon and already-existing congestion in it.

"I'm beyond concerned about this," said Todd Pedersen, an Orem resident who founded the security and smart home company Vivint. "It just doesn't feel right."

Large music venue

Vesper Amphitheater is being pushed by the famous Osmond family. Singer Donny Osmond spoke at the project's unveiling in May and was named chair of Vesper's advisory board.

Plans call for a 20,000-seat music venue, a 75-room hotel, thousands of parking spaces and other associated facilities to be built on 100 acres. About a quarter of that land is currently a gravel pit. The rest is owned by the city of Provo.

"This is an amazing, innovative, unique, bold project," Judkins said.

But amid public pushback, developers recently pulled the application they had submitted to the city and are reworking their plans to try to address concerns about a number of items, including parking and retail space. They plan to resubmit their application by the end of the month.

"We needed to kind of hit pause and reassess and then move forward so that we could be in line with the feedback that we're getting," Bryan Bayles, representative for Vesper, told KSL last week.

In an interview on Monday, Judkins said it "would be irresponsible" not to look at the project and determine if it's feasible.

"I'm not a 'yes at all costs,'" the mayor said. "I am a 'yes, let's explore this amazing opportunity.'"

Public pushback

But public opposition to the proposed amphitheater is stiff. The city of Orem recently issued a rare rebuke of the project, saying the proposed impacts are "too significant to ignore."

"My first thought was, I'm going to move," said Pedersen, the Vivint founder who lives in an Orem neighborhood near the mouth of Provo Canyon.

He's most concerned about traffic to a venue with that many seats.

"This two-lane highway (in the canyon) and then the offshoots of University (Avenue) and 800 North, they can't handle it," Pedersen said. "They just can't handle it."

Golden Harper, who also lives not far from the proposed site, said the land should be used for a park or something that preserves the open space – not for a "giant mega development."

"Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins is spearheading an effort to sell off a ton of public land, prime public land," Harper said, noting the land is "really needed, honestly, for parking, for a park, (or) for what could be the best mountain bike trail system in Utah County."

What's next?

Judkins pushed back on the notion that she's spearheading the effort to develop the amphitheater.

"I am not driving the sale of city-owned land," she said.

Judkins said the development agreement for Vesper includes conserving the land. Developers told KSL last week that trails and public access are a "massive component" of their plans.

Whenever the revised application is submitted to the city, it will go back to the planning commission – which previously recommended rejecting it – and then to the City Council for a possible zoning change.

"I just hope that people will give it this chance to move forward to this next step, so that we can see what's actually possible and if it's an idea that we need to move forward on," said Judkins, noting the City Council can always change the zoning designation back if it doesn't work out.

If the process moves forward, the Utah Department of Transportation would be responsible for evaluating any requests for Vesper's access to U.S. 189, which is a state highway.

"Our review will evaluate the (developer's) traffic projections against current traffic conditions in the corridor, not in isolation from them, and will consider emergency vehicle access and corridor operations during high-volume events as part of the safety and operations review," UDOT wrote in an email in response to concerns from residents.

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