State lawmakers last week passed a bill that appears to force Francis to accept a four-story hotel in its town center despite the City Council’s previous decision to codify a three-story limit.
Senate Bill 284 was sponsored by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore of Salt Lake County and Rep. Jill Koford of Weber County. The legislation focused on general laws relating to local land use, but a modified version of the bill contained language requiring Francis to allow certain four-story developments.
The last day of the general session was Friday, and it was unclear that morning whether the bill, which was being held in committee, would pass by the end of the day.
But lawmakers proposed another modified version of the bill shortly after 9 p.m, and the updated legislation quickly passed the state House in a 61-7 vote. The state Senate similarly passed the bill in a 24-3 vote around 11:45 p.m. — 15 minutes before the 2026 general session ended.
Gov. Spencer Cox has not yet signed the bill into law, but it is scheduled to go into effect on May 6, assuming it is not vetoed.
The bill stated a municipality may regulate the number of habitable stories a structure may contain, as well as its overall height. However, it also specifically said that if a land use application for a “commercial lodging structure” was approved before Sept. 1, 2025, then “the land use authority may not limit the number of above-ground habitable stories the land use applicant builds within the maximum overall height that the land use authority approved for the structure.”
“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 in an interview with The Park Record last week. “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 Francis City Council previously approved changing its maximum allowable building height in the town center from 40 feet to 45 feet, which is tall enough to accommodate a fourth story. However, the City Council passed a three-story ordinance after a months-long back and forth among 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 the situation is also frustrating because the city increased its maximum building height 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 included.
“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 exurb 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 Francis has a population of around 1,800 people, which is why the bill took him and other city officials by surprise.
“That’s not a significant voting bloc for anybody outside the city of Francis,” he said.
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.
Webster said the decision wouldn’t affect his team’s 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. 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 showing he had removed the attic balconies and non-structural interior walls and added shutters over the attic windows. The developer’s legal counsel also 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, 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 design 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.”