State lawmakers may force Francis to accept a four-story hotel in its town center despite the City Council’s decision to codify a three-story limit last year.
Senate Bill 284 is sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore of Salt Lake County and Rep. Jill Koford of Weber County. The legislation focuses on general laws relating to local land use, but the latest version of the bill also includes language that would require Francis to allow certain four-story developments. The legislative session was scheduled to end at midnight Friday, and it was unclear Friday morning whether the bill would pass.
The proposed bill states a municipality may regulate the number of habitable stories a structure may contain, as well as its overall height. However, it also specifically says that if a land use application for a “commercial lodging structure” was approved before Sept. 1, 2025, then the city “shall allow the land use applicant to build as many habitable stories within the approved structure as permitted under the State Construction Code.”
“It sure seems to be narrowly tailored to include the Francis situation, specifically the hotel that is being built in the town center,” said Francis City Planning Commission Vice Chair Rich Christiansen. “What the language of the bill appears to do is make it so that, as a city, Francis is unable to regulate the number of stories in that structure and shifts any regulation of that to the state.”
The City Council passed the three-story ordinance after a monthslong back-and-forth between the Planning Commission, city councilors and developers regarding the aesthetics of the hotel, Christiansen said.
“We didn’t want a situation where we had four-story buildings with flat rooflines and rather ugly profiles,” he said. “We’re trying to make Francis a beautiful city, a place where people want to be, and this kind of thing shifts that ability from the citizens of Francis to control how their city develops and pushes it to people in the state who, frankly, probably don’t care how Francis develops.”
Christiansen said Francis has a population of around 1,800 people, which is why the proposed bill took him and other city officials by surprise.
“That’s not a significant voting bloc for anybody outside the city of Francis,” Christiansen said.
He said the situation is also frustrating because the city increased its maximum building height from 40 feet to 45 feet to encourage developers to make interesting architectural choices. The 45-foot allowance should let developers build three-story structures with sloped roofs and unique features, but that isn’t physically feasible with a fourth story.
“Once you put in that fourth story, you’re eliminating that benefit completely,” Christiansen said. “If you look at the difference between places that are well-developed versus not, it seems like the beauty of structures and their design features play a big part, so we want to push Francis in that direction. We don’t want to become a shoebox exburb of any other city. We want to create a city that, on its own, stands as something beautiful and worth visiting and worth living in.”
Christiansen said it was also concerning to him that the Legislature’s trend of codifying controversial developments at the state level is now affecting the Wasatch Back’s smaller municipalities.
“This seems to be a continuation of the state’s politics, with respect to the Dakota Pacific development over in Park City,” he said. “It seems like this trend may continue. I’m hearing some noise that similar pressures are being applied to a development in Browns Canyon, so it seems to be increasingly the case that the state is intermingling themselves with what should be purely local matters.”
Rusty Webster, the developer spearheading the hotel slated for construction on the corner of S.R. 35 and Spring Hollow Road, initially presented plans for a four-story building with commercial space for retail businesses and restaurants in addition to the actual hotel, dubbed The Stonewright, in early 2025.
Developers at the time hoped the City Council would approve a proposed ordinance increasing the maximum allowed number of stories in the town center from three to four, but councilors were ultimately against the change and declined to adopt the ordinance in a 3-1 vote.
Webster and his team said the decision wouldn’t affect their proposal because they had a backup plan — a three-story building with the fourth story converted into an attic instead of another floor for hotel rooms.
But councilors said they were worried the building wasn’t actually a three-story structure when developers appeared before the City Council with their revisions in April. The updated plans showed balconies on the fourth floor, and the interior plan showed walls and doors, similar to the lower floors intended for hotel rooms. The City Council denied the design in a 3-2 vote and asked developers to return with new blueprints at a later date.
Webster then submitted another proposal to the City Council in June showing he had removed the attic balconies and non-structural interior walls and added shutters over the attic windows. The developer’s legal counsel additionally sent a memo to the City Council outlining the definition of an attic and claiming the three-story limitation “does not apply to the attic” or the rooftop deck.
But the City Council wasn’t convinced and denied the architectural plans for a second time in another 3-2 vote, spurring Webster’s decision to file a lawsuit in July. The city and the development team engaged in an informal mediation as part of the litigation, and the intermediary involved in the case subsequently issued an informal opinion siding with Webster.
The City Council approved the architectural designs in August for a three-story hotel with an attic in return for the lawsuit’s dismissal. However, councilors were clear that they still disagreed with the building’s design and said they believed the developer was no longer considering the town’s residents when making decisions or working with the City Council “in good faith.”
“We’re not trying to be stubborn. We told you what we wanted, and I think we all know what was presented,” Francis City Councilor Clint Summers said to Webster at the time of the vote.
City Councilor Sam Hunter said he voted to approve the architectural plans to save the city and its taxpayers from dealing with the financial repercussions of fighting the developers in court, but he similarly criticized Webster for how his team handled conversations with the city.
“I do not like the outcome,” he said. “They’re forcing a four-story building down our throats. … I feel it’s our duty as council people to do what’s best for the city. To keep denying this, forcing us into a lawsuit, ultimately, the state Legislature will probably side against us, and it’s going to cost the city money needlessly.”
The 2026 general session ends Friday at midnight. If the bill were to pass, it would go into effect on May 6.