The Summit County Council postponed a vote on the proposed Junction Commons redevelopment to next week after the county’s legal counsel said the agenda item had been noticed incorrectly and needed to be rescheduled.
Singerman Real Estate, the company that purchased the outlet mall in 2018, submitted plans to rezone the property from the town center zone to the neighborhood mixed-use zone, which encourages developers to build affordable housing alongside commercial stores.
The proposal outlines plans for 370 residential units, 220 of which will be earmarked as affordable housing. Of those affordable units, 188 will be priced around the 80% area median income, or AMI, mark, while the remaining 32 units will be priced around the 60% AMI.
The developers said they plan to use a system that averages the AMIs of the affordable units, allowing for more flexibility. For example, if a resident in an affordable unit receives a pay raise, their AMI would increase, and the rent payment will rise in proportion to their new salary. This permits the developer to lease the next affordable unit for a lower AMI, according to Singerman Real Estate representatives.
The project also reduces existing commercial space on the property by approximately 56,000 square feet. The residential units, which are a mix of townhomes and apartment buildings, will be integrated into the commercial space.
County councilors overwhelmingly expressed their support for the project on Wednesday and were poised to make a motion approving the development’s master plan until Chief Civil Deputy David Thomas said the agenda item had been noticed incorrectly, which halted the process.
Specifically, the agenda item was marked as a possible approval of the master plan development rather than the rezone request, which the developers need to obtain before the larger plan advances.
The County Council will instead meet virtually at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday to vote on the rezone and master plan document during a special meeting. If the master plan is approved, the county will then negotiate with Singerman Real Estate to draft a formal development agreement.
The site plan for the Junction Commons redevelopment project has been downsized since it was first presented to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission. The original proposal included 433 residential units, with 205 earmarked as affordable housing, but the County Council expressed concerns about the project’s density and traffic impacts, especially in combination with other Snyderville Basin developments, such as Altus Park City or the Utah Olympic Park expansion.
The reduction in units amounted to a 14% decrease from the original proposal.