State lawmakers and Ivory Homes are seemingly targeting Summit County in a new bill focused on urban growth and development, with county officials tying the legislation to the company’s efforts to develop large swaths of land near Coalville and Browns Canyon.

House Bill 457 is sponsored by Rep. James Dunnigan of Salt Lake County and Sen. Ronald Winterton, who represents parts of Daggett, Duchesne, Summit, Uintah and Wasatch counties. It was originally drafted to address “islands” of unincorporated land in Weber County and to assist in the annexation of those parcels into surrounding cities.

However, Deputy County Manager Janna Young said the bill was modified to target Summit and Tooele counties by defining the two communities as “bench” counties, or third-class counties that border a first- or second-class county and may be experiencing growth pressures as a result.

If the bill were to pass, Summit County would be established as a “metropolitan growth county” and would be required to add a new section on “urban reserve areas” in its two general plans.

“I don’t really know what that means or what impact it would have … but we do know that Ivory Homes is behind this because they testified at the committee and talked about it and specifically mentioned us,” Young told the Summit County Council on Wednesday. “As you know, they are currently working on an application for a village development in Browns Canyon, so we don’t know if it somehow is trying to facilitate that outside of our processes.”

The legislation says metropolitan growth counties would need to designate “one or more” areas as an urban reserve area, or a piece of the county designated for future growth and development. 

For each urban reserve area, the county would identify “land suitable for future residential and employment uses,” plan for transportation corridors and utilities, identify potential locations for future schools, parks and public safety facilities, and evaluate the capacity of water and sewage systems.

“A metropolitan growth county’s general plan shall include policies that support eventual incorporation or annexation of an urban reserve area when sufficient demand develops for a variety of municipal services,” the bill said.

County Council Vice Chair Roger Armstrong said he didn’t understand the point of the bill because the neighboring first-class county — Salt Lake County — does not have much development along the border to bring further growth into Summit County.

“Obviously, it’s an attempt to basically do a preliminary municipality but through a different process,” said Chief Civil Deputy Dave Thomas. “Those areas have to be high-density areas. It requires a number of different things, including capital facilities and so forth, so it’s basically a municipal-type service plan. Once you have that in the General Plan, there needs to be some kind of mechanism in your land use regulations to implement that, which is probably through some kind of new zone.”

Community Development Director Peter Barnes said it wasn’t necessarily “absurd” to make changes to how the general plans are structured, especially because the East Side currently doesn’t have a future land use map. However, he said, it may be more likely that the bill is the result of Ivory Homes’ proposed development near Coalville rather than the Browns Canyon neighborhood.

“I believe a part of this provision actually requires us to identify growth areas and talk very specifically about infrastructure,” Barnes said. “But we can actually deny an area because there’s no infrastructure. There is no current infrastructure in Browns Canyon, and we’re not proposing to build any, so I’m not sure what the immediate advantage would be for this. … If there’s a specific reason for it, I’m beginning to suspect it might have more to do with an immediate development in the Cedar Crest area than it is in Browns Canyon.”

Cedar Crest Village was a proposed 1,000-acre project near Hoytsville, spearheaded by Larry H. Miller Real Estate and Ivory Homes. It was ultimately downscaled and renamed Hidden Meadow Village last year after the scope of the development became too unruly for officials and residents.

Developers attempted to pursue annexation into Coalville with the modified 316-acre Hidden Meadow Village project, but the Coalville City Council declined the proposal, with councilors saying they needed more resources to further analyze the village and how it would affect the city. City councilors at the time expressed a desire to revisit Hidden Meadow Village in the future, but it has not yet appeared as an agenda item.

Ivory Homes is also involved in the potential development of 407 acres of land in Browns Canyon, dubbed Lost Creek. The company originally applied for a preliminary municipality, but the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office did not engage in a feasibility study because the department had already received multiple other filings.

State law only allows two preliminary municipality filings per calendar year, meaning Lost Creek was automatically disqualified from consideration.

The project is still a possibility, though. Ivory Homes submitted a request to establish new zoning in the Browns Canyon area in January, with plans to collaborate with the Summit County Council on a development agreement if the project moves forward. The application outlined a vision for up to 3,000 residential units built over “several decades,” with at least 10% of the homes designated as affordable housing.

The County Council has not yet discussed the Browns Canyon proposal or the requested zoning change.

H.B. 457 passed the House Political Subdivisions Committee on Tuesday and is now slated for a presentation on the House floor, although the hearing has not been scheduled as of Thursday afternoon. The general session ends on March 6.

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Ivory Homes will need to work with the Summit County government to develop 490 acres in Browns Canyon after the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office declined to initiate a feasibility study for the developer’s proposed preliminary municipality, Lost Creek.

A spokesperson for the Lieutenant Governor’s Office on Wednesday confirmed the department had already received multiple filings for preliminary municipalities in other parts of the state by the time Ivory Homes filed its application for Lost Creek on Jan. 1.

State law only allows two preliminary municipality filings per calendar year, meaning Lost Creek was automatically disqualified from consideration.

A preliminary municipality can transition to, and incorporate as, a new town under a state law that went into effect in 2024. The law amended the Utah Municipal Code to provide for a pilot program for the incorporation of a preliminary municipality, giving “all the powers and duties” of a town, including zoning and land use decisions.

The law applies to land that is privately owned by three or fewer people who intend to develop it with at least 100 people while meeting certain affordable housing benchmarks in the first five years of the preliminary municipality’s existence.

The Browns Canyon proposal was submitted by Ivory Homes, Garff-Rogers Ranch and EBR Management. It was the second time Summit County had seen a request for a preliminary municipality, with Dakota Pacific Real Estate filing a similar application for a town named Park City Tech last year as a safeguard for its planned development in Kimball Junction.

The three companies listed on the application own 490 acres in the Browns Canyon area, which is about a mile away from Park City and Hideout. The developers said they intended to build “a mix of residential unit types, including affordable housing, open space, park space and commercial/mixed-use” areas in addition to installing “necessary public and private infrastructure” and a municipal building space, according to documents obtained through the Government Records Access and Management Act.

In total, the proposed preliminary municipality would have had 193 single-family homes, 127 townhomes, 190 cottage homes and 10,000 square feet of retail space by the end of the project. The application also mentioned 255 nightly rentals on the south side of the development area.

Approximately 642 full-time residents were predicted to live in Lost Creek following its last phase of construction.

A development in Browns Canyon is still a possibility, though, depending on negotiations with the county government.

Community Development Director Peter Barnes previously confirmed the county had received its own application proposing an amendment to the code to allow for a new zone in relation to the Browns Canyon proposal.

The application has not yet been made public, but Ivory Development President Chris Gamvroulas, who was listed as the preliminary municipality’s primary sponsor, said the company already hoped to work with the county rather than pursue incorporation.

Specifically, Gamvroulas said in an interview with The Park Record last week that the preliminary municipality served as a “backstop,” or safeguard, for the development if proceedings with the county weren’t moving along at a “timely and predictable” pace. However, he said his preference was always to create and implement a new zone in Browns Canyon under county code to develop the residential neighborhood, which now appears to be Ivory Homes’ only route for approval.

Rep. Tiara Auxier, a Republican who represents part of Summit County, recently filed a bill during the ongoing general session to change how preliminary municipalities function. 

A group of nonprofit organizations in Moab has also sued Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a development company and a preliminary municipality near the Colorado River over the implementation of preliminary municipalities in Utah. They claimed Senate Bill 258, which created the pilot program, is unconstitutional because it removes local land use control from the hands of elected officials and gives it to the state and private development companies.

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