As open space across Utah Valley and the state of Utah continues to deteriorate, cities continue to grapple with a similar conundrum.

How should the rights of landowners be prioritized, and the growing demand for housing be addressed? And how is that balanced with the preservation of open land, and wishes of a community?

It’s an issue the Orem City Council faces with a 14-acre plot of land on the west side of the city known as Wilkerson Farm.

The agri-entertainment property ran by the land’s tenants, Richard and Rachel Wilkerson, is beloved by many who have visited its farm or carnival grounds over the years.

But Al Switzler, who owns the property through his charity Candide Charitable Enterprise and used it to raise crops for Pleasant Grove Tabitha’s Way which he co-owns, said he’s lost money trying to keep Wilkerson Farm afloat.

He’s ready to move on.

Switzler is in a contractual agreement to sell the land to a home developer that will build R-8 single family residential homes. The city will either vote to approve a zoning request made by the developer, or shoot it down, keeping it zoned for open space.

A consideration for the council is Orem’s 2018 general plan which zoned the property as low density residential. However, the Orem Planning Commission recommended in March that the property not be rezoned.

“The city doesn’t want to close down Wilkerson Farm,” City Councilwoman Jenn Gale said. “We’d be thrilled if Wilkerson Farm was able to stay. But that’s an issue between the property owner and the Wilkersons who have been tenants there. So if they can work it out, I think it’s great. And if they can’t, and the property owner decides to sell his property, well then we need to have a look at that and what that looks like.”

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Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

The property sits in the center of Utah Valley, providing a picturesque view of a white-capped Mount Timpanogos. In mid April, the ground begins rousing from its hibernation, and greenery comes alive again.

It’s a glimpse of the agricultural-side of the valley so quickly eroding.

“We’re hitting the point where the land is starting to get maxed out,” Rachel Wilkerson said. “Resources are becoming scarce in the wild west.”

This particular plot of land has been resilient, though. The soil hasn’t been displaced since it was settled in the pioneer days, Rachel Wilkerson said. Someone had purchased it in the 2000s to build a school, but the project was scrapped when the recession hit and the soil remained.

Richard Wilkerson began leasing the field in 2010, growing fruits and vegetables, and selling them in a farmers market.

In 2015, there was another proposal for development. Rachel Wilkerson said it was for townhomes, Switzler remembers it being for storage units. That’s when Switzler’s charity swooped in and bought the land, along with 10 acres across the street in Provo. He made an agreement with the Wilkersons where they could pay their lease by donating some of their crops to the Pleasant Grove Tabitha’s Way Food Pantry, a win-win for both parties.

“I said, well maybe a strategy to do this is they can farm it, pay their lease in vegetables and make a living, which means I wouldn’t have to hire farmers,” Switzler said. “At that time, Tabitha’s Way couldn’t afford farmers. So that was the plan.”

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

The Wilkersons would continue to make their income selling other crops. However, doing so on a small parcel of land proved challenging. The equipment and infrastructure required to run the farm had sunk the Wilkersons into debt and they couldn’t make enough income to climb out of it.

“People want to pay 50 cents for a cucumber, and it’s like, how are you supposed to make it?” Rachel Wilkerson said.

So they added an entertainment portion of the business in 2015, first with a corn maze, then by adding a tall green swing, and eventually turning a portion of the property into a full-scale carnival ground.

The carnival was profitable, Rachel Wilkerson said, but the debt and overhead from the farming side continued accumulating. And Switzler grew weary as he continued to lose money.

“And so a couple years ago, I said, ‘Mission one is Tabitha’s Way. This isn’t working. We’ll give you a year to see if you can get on your feet.’ And that didn’t work,” he said.

Today, the Provo side has already been rezoned and sold for development. If the Orem side can be rezoned and sold, Switzer said all the money he makes will go to his charity to fight food insecurity.

“I can tell you there won’t be a farm on my property as long as I own it,” he said. “It cost me a lot of money to try to make it work. Cost me, not my charity. And I can’t imagine that anybody would try to be as mission driven as I was, to subsidize that like I did.”

Rachel Wilkerson, who said her and her husband haven’t gone on a vacation since their honeymoon, instead pouring their time and money into cultivating the land, is desperate for another solution — perhaps a coalition of buyers that can present a last-minute offer to Switzler and turn the space into a conservation easement.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

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Developer Tyler Horan of Keystone Construction, who said he knew Switzler from doing previous work at Tabitha’s Way, gave Switzler an offer and won the bid for the property.

After putting the property under contract, Horan applied in early 2024 for permits to put in a mixed-residential development, which he said complied with the density stipulated by the city’s general zoning plan.

Keystone Construction faced immediate pushback from community members who didn’t want townhomes or rentals on the land. So Horan said they redesigned the whole thing, and are now proposing 8,000 square foot, single family lots.

“We thought when we did that, it was going to be like, ‘Oh, wow, this is awesome, and we’re excited.’ But if you saw that planning commission meeting, it’s like, ‘You guys are evil, and this project is horrible, and we don’t want anything to happen with the ground.'”

The proposal has garnered media attention and publicity, and the vast majority of people speaking out at city meetings are staunchly against rezoning.

Rachel Wilkerson thinks the attention is due largely to the connection so many people have with the farm’s fairground.

It’s a place she will soon say goodbye to herself.

In an April 8 city council meeting Switzler said he’s told the Wilkersons to vacate the property by May 31. Privately, Wilkerson said he’s told them, “As long as you’re working on it and moving on it, I’ll work with you.”

She said Switzler has always been their good friend and she recognizes the financial reasons for why he wants to sell, but said if he doesn’t want to sell the property to a conservation easement, he should consider selling it to community members who have an attachment to the property.

Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

One individual pushing for that alternative is Orem resident James Brown, who considers himself a big believer in preserving local farm land.

He said he’s reached out to 150 people about potentially investing in the property, and has received 40-50 “vaguely positive responses” but said without knowing an asking price, it’s hard to get people to commit. Brown said his attempts earlier this year to contact Switzler or the developers through a real estate agent were unsuccessful, but that he spoke with Switzler directly after a city meeting.

“If (Switzler) wants to sell it, that’s totally fine,” Brown said. “I have no issue with that, but it would be nice if the community were given an opportunity to say, ‘You want to sell the property? We’re the stakeholders here, right? We’re the ones who live here. Give us the opportunity to buy it first.'”

Switzler’s response to that is that he doesn’t have the right to sell the property anymore.

“I’m in a contractual agreement with the developer,” he said. “If they want to sell it to you, you’d have to talk to them.” ‘

He also views the issue as straightforward. He owns the land, and in the general plan the property was zoned for low density residential.

“So all other arguments seem immaterial,” he said.

Horan, who said Keystone is waiting for the rezoning decision before officially buying the property, views the situation the same way.

“I recognize that people like open space, people like farms. I like farms,” Horan said. “I get that story, and I can see how this Wilkerson Farm, especially, has all this history and all these emotions attached to it. But the one thing, at least from my perspective, that’s hard to look away from is residential development is what’s on the city’s general plan for this area. And that actually matters for a lot of reasons. And one of the reasons is because money was invested in infrastructure, water, sewer, power. The infrastructure for the city was built around this kind of a plan. … This was never intended to be a farm forever. The city just wasn’t designed that way.”

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Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

Councilwoman LaNae Millett said she understands the importance of past decisions, like the 2018 general plan that lays out the property as low density residential, but believes good governance relies on “accurate and current information,” and that the city’s needs should be reevaluated and adjusted.

She believes Wilkerson Farm should not be rezoned primarily due to its location. The property sits adjacent to the Front Runner tracks, and trains zoom by every 30 minutes.

“Placing housing in such close proximity to industrial and railroad with jarring freight trains goes against land use principles,” Millett said. “Taking away the Open Space Zone would lead to two undesirable results: It would remove an important buffer, and, importantly, it would create an inhospitable residential zone. ”

Mayor David Young agrees, arguing if the land is developed, there will be 10-12 backyards up against the Front Runner track, with the industrial yard and Interstate-15 behind it.

“In that environment, generally, with proper zoning, you don’t build right on top of those kinds of disruptions to your house,” Young said. “Normally, what you do is you try to create a buffer. … Right now, it’s a buffer. And so I guess what we’re being asked to do is to take that buffer out, put the houses right on the train tracks.”

Other council members view it differently. For Councilman Tom Macdonald, the question is a matter of property rights.

“This man owns property,” he said. “It no longer makes sense for him to lease it to the farmer. … He has every right to develop it, and the fact that he’s agreed to develop it in what is the gold standard in Orem, R8, I’m fine with him developing it.”

Gale said she is trying to collect as much information as she can to make an informed decision. One reason she is considering approving it, though, is much of the open land surrounding the farm has previously been approved for rezoning.

“Wilkerson Farm isn’t actually going to be there regardless of the zoning change,” she said. “And I think most (people) aren’t aware that all of the bordering properties have been zoned for housing, so there’s questions of equity there. Why can’t this one property owner sell where all these others have? But on the flip side, we always need more open space. So those are the things I’m weighing.”

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Jacob Nielson, Daily Herald

The city council originally planned to vote on the rezoning decision in an April 8 meeting, but the vote was delayed by request of the developer, according to Macdonald.

“I got a call from someone in city management who said, ‘Hey, the developers asked to delay this,'” he said. “I said, ‘If the developer wants to, I’m fine with that.’ And obviously, to my knowledge, they contacted every member of the city council, including the mayor, and got a majority of the vote to say we’re fine with delaying it.”

Macdonald said votes are delayed frequently, and he had no issue with the decision, but acknowledged that in hindsight, it was probably delayed because the developer learned two members of the council, Jeff Lambson and Chris Killpack, were not going to be at the meeting.

Their absence could impact the vote, because rezoning requests can be approved only if four of the seven-person council approved it, and of the five members who were at the meeting, two of them, Young and Millett, are publicly skeptical of rezoning the property.

Millett believes the decision to move the agenda should have been made in a transparent public vote, as “judicious governance would have dictated,” she said.

“Four council members demonstrated a complete disregard for residents’ time and efforts,” Millett said. “The developer was ready to present, but chose not to as two council members were on vacation. Our council meeting dates are posted months in advance and technology is in place to allow councilmembers to call in so they can vote – that is what should have happened. As a city council, we should not be allowing developers to control our city council agenda.”

Young said that the council will review the decision and procedures in a future work session.

In the meantime, the vote still looms. Not on the agenda for the April 22 meeting, the earliest a decision will be made is in May. What happens is up to the discretion of the council.

Rachel Wilkerson recognizes her hands are tied in the decision, but won’t stop fighting until everything is finalized.

“We’ve held nothing back,” Rachel Wilkerson said. “We’ve tried every option. I know everybody comes like, oh, have you tried a CSA? Have you tried this? Have you tried that? We’re like, yes, yes, yes. We tried everything. But it really is a labor of love, and if there’s a way to keep doing it, we’ll try every way.”

But selling the land to developers is what Switzler views as his best path forward. If the city council denies the rezoning, he’ll go from there.

“I don’t have a plan B,” he said. “I mean, we’ll see. We’ll make decisions when we have more data.”