County commissioners outlined a 60,000-acre development plan for the Elberta area on Thursday, saying they want to avoid problems that plague cities in the north part of the county.

The plan was created, in part, at the behest of south Utah County's largest landowner, the LDS Church. Several out of state businesses are thought to be looking at relocating to the area, including paper products giant First Quality.

"We're trying to be more proactive than reactive in this thing," said Commissioner Gary Anderson, who with fellow commissioners Larry Ellertson and Steve White laid out a vision of a massive community complete with industry, residential and mass-transit plans.

Specifically, commissioners cited the transportation and tax base woes of Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs as reasons for the effort. Those communities were launched by developers who weren't looking at the big picture, Ellertson said.

Commissioners fully expect a city or multiple cities to spring up among the 60,000 acres, but they want an industrial base there first so that a tax base and jobs exist as anchors. They also wouldn't have to fork over a pile of money for transportation right-of-ways after the fact if they can be secured before building begins. When development outpaces infrastructure, the cost to catch up is great.

"On 2000 West we paid one farmer $4 million for right of way," White said, referring to the major east-west corridor in the north part of the county.

Now

The land in question is all in the unincorporated part of the county in the Elberta area, and it's not exactly paradise. There is some mining waste and water quality concerns that have to be dealt with, even though a massive new well has been dug in the area recently.

"We've done some preliminary testing," Anderson said. "It is an issue, and one we're addressing."

Most of the land will have to be rezoned. The LDS Church owns about a third of the property in question and it's all farmland.

"Even though today your neighbors would be jackrabbits ... some day there will be nice neighbors out there," Ellertson said.

Some day

To get a feel for just how large the plan is, if you were to overlay it on the Salt Lake Valley, it would stretch from North Temple in Salt Lake City "clear to Draper," Ellertson said. While buildout stretches into the unforeseeable future, the area could eventually hold as many as 750,000 people. That's half again as many people who live in all of Utah Valley.

And if you think you won't live to see that day, commissioners point to the continuing population explosion in the county.

"By my own imprecise calculations we are about 10 years wrong," Ellertson said of previous estimates that would have put Utah County at half a million people in 2018. The county currently has around 550,000 residents.

And while 80 percent of that growth is internal, public and private groups are reaching out to external businesses to relocate. The Daily Herald learned recently that East Coast-based First Quality Enterprises is attempting to seal a deal with the LDS Church for land and government officials for tax incentives. The business would initially bring 250 jobs and a $250 million investment to produce baby diapers and paper towels.

The company has not publicly announced it will be coming, and has only been known as Project Cannonball while Utah officials work to bring it into the state.

On Tuesday, Ellertson acknowledged that Cannonball -- whoever they may be -- was considering a site within the boundaries of the Elberta area master plan.

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