Salt Lake County Council approves Olympia Hills development, despite community backlash

Land between 6300 West and 8500 West and 12400 South and 13100 South in unincorporated Salt Lake County, foreground, is pictured on Monday, March 11, 2019. | Steve Griffin, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake County Council approved the controversial Olympia Hills development Tuesday with a 6-3 vote.

The decision matches the council’s preliminary vote last week, where council members Aimee Winder Newton, Steve DeBry and Richard Snelgrove voted against the development. During Tuesday’s meeting, scores of residents again packed the county government building in protest, wearing red T-shirts with “#OHNO” printed on the back.

The Olympia Hills development would bring 6,300 housing units to 933 acres in west Herriman, with contemporary housing, neighborhood parks, commercial centers and a 100-acre Utah State University agricultural center.

After the vote, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, in a written statement, said she would not veto the proposal.

“After months and months of negotiations between the developer and county planning staff, I believe this propsal is as strong as it can be,” she said. “The alternative to Olympia Hills.

But residents and government officials in the southwest corner of the county have opposed the development in almost every step of the process, despite the rosy picture painted by developers.

Before the vote and during the public comment portion of the County Council meeting, Lawrence Horman,, of Murray, asked council members Tuesday to postpone the project.

“My suggestion to the council is if you don’t want to stop the development completely — slow it down,” he said. “It would help out. It would make a difference.”

Many residents don’t want to bring such a dense community to a part of the valley already experiencing explosive growth. As Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs pointed out to the County Council in January, a 2008 Salt Lake County development plan recommended three to five housing units per acre in Herriman — Olympia Hills would have almost seven units per acre.

Steven Shields, of Herriman, asked the council to go back to the drawing board and table the vote.

“Come back with a better solution that fits so that we can join you in support of what could be a great project,” he said.

And as many residents pointed out in January’s meeting, the development could flood the area’s already crowded roads, worsening the traffic that currently plagues Herriman, Riverton, South Jordan and other surrounding towns.

Wearing a red T-shirt, Lisa Brown, of Herriman, also asked the council to table the vote in hopes residents and city leaders could reach a compromise.

“What we heard from the six of you that voted in favor of this project were arguments kind of telling us that you don’t really see the big picture. We are not against master plan communities,” she said. “The impact of the number of homes is at the heart of the issue. Because it creates such a ripple effect in so many other areas.”

But in support of Olympia Hills, Councilman Jim Bradley reminded residents at January’s meeting the development could take up to 30 years to finish.

Real estate agent Nigel Swaby, a proponent for the project, urged the council to approve the development and said Olympia Hills would benefit the community and help with the state’s housing shortage.

“Every year we have 80,000 people coming into the state, that’s not counting the birthrate. We have a housing shortage,” he said. It’s a smart housing project with mixed use.”

Not passing the Olympia Hills project would “waste” the 933 acres allotted to the development, according to Swaby.

“When an opportunity like this comes I would urge you to take it,” he said.

Other council members, like Shireen Ghorbani and Arlyn Bradshaw, pointed out that the application has been substantially scaled back since originally being proposed in 2018.

In 2018, the development came to a halt when, then serving as county mayor, Rep. Ben McAdams, D-Utah, vetoed the proposal after it was approved by the County Council. Now, two years later, county residents are hoping the congressman can come to their rescue once again.

On Monday, several Utah Republicans sent McAdams a letter pleading him to use his “political influence” to convince Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson to veto the development.

In a statement to the Deseret News, McAdams said he still opposes Olympia Hills for the same reasons he did in 2018, although he acknowledged the development is not a federal issue.

“I vetoed the Olympia Hills development proposal when I was county mayor out of concerns I had about the proposal,” McAdams said. “My opinion hasn’t changed. I’m still opposed.”

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