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Pleasant Grove has an opportunity to show the rest of Utah Valley an example of positive cooperation between residents, business and government.
At stake is the shape of the city's future. "Utah's City of Trees" has a warm, small-town feel, and residents defend it with enviable enthusiasm. Yet almost everyone agrees the old downtown needs to be revitalized in some fashion.
When a debate over plans roused stormy responses at meetings a few months ago, the city formed a Downtown Advisory Board to get more input. Among other tasks, the board has examined two key elements of revitalization: the city's Downtown 2020 Action Plan and a proposed mixed-use overlay for the center of the town.
The advisory board's advice may help quell some of the disputes that have roiled the city. Overall, the board aims to provide standards that will encourage developers and gradually bring in suitable businesses, yet protect residential neighborhoods, preserve historic buildings and evoke the traditional friendliness and charm of downtown Pleasant Grove. For one small but telling example, the board has proposed dubbing the central business district "the downtown village."
The board has tried to develop compromises on key issues. For example, many residents were up in arms over plans to develop an eight-story building at the edge of downtown. After studying the question, the board voted on Thursday to recommend that the overlay generally limit building height to 48 feet -- four stories -- but also allow conditional use permits for buildings of 60 feet (five stories).
Most board members concluded that any building much taller than four stories would dwarf the rest of the downtown. Anyone who's driven down Main Street would have a hard time disagreeing. This part of Pleasant Grove is about as close as you can get to Mayberry without Andy Griffith.
Sixty-foot buildings don't seem particularly compatible with the old business district, but in compromise situations something's got to give. Whether the conditional use process will be sufficient to prevent the installation of a five-story building that will dominate the "downtown village" is a question residents need to ask.
A few months back, there was palpable tension between residents and city officials. But the board looked for solutions at the planning level. One key problem was the feeling of residents that new commercial buildings would overwhelm their tree-shaded homes. City planners came up with a proposal that commercial space abutting residential neighborhoods would have to provide 100-foot-wide green spaces functioning as setbacks to cushion homes from the effect of any big new buildings.
Board members also learned about some fiscal realities. At one point the overlay called for first floors of mixed-use buildings (commercial and residential combined) to be dedicated to retail use that would enhance the downtown as a shopping destination. But the board learned that if a building has too much commercial space, residential occupants may have trouble obtaining financing.
Proposed solution: allow residential use in units on the first floor if they are behind or beside the commercial space, allowing more residential without detracting from retail operations.
Aside from any solutions that came out of the board's work, the cooperative effort seems to have allowed residents and business people to feel that their interests were being taken into account. It also allowed all sides to better understand the situation and respond with compromises and creative solutions. That's as important as the details of the plans.
• The Pleasant Grove planning commission is set to hear the Downtown Advisory Board's recommendations on Thursday. |
