An influential Utahn wants to tee up 80 acres of dwindling open space in SLC for industrial uses

An open 80-acre spread of grasslands near the fringe of the Great Salt Lake is being eyed for a rezone to industrial uses, drawing pushback from some neighbors and environmentalists.

Those opponents are urging Salt Lake City’s planning commission to reject a bid to change to the Northpoint property’s allowable uses and are mounting a campaign to shut it down.

“At a time when the Great Salt Lake is shrinking before our eyes,” they say in their online petition, “this rezoning would permanently erase approximately 80 acres of irreplaceable wetland playa — lands that quietly sustain the lake, shelter wildlife, and protect our communities.”

The open space, located north of the Salt Lake City airport at about 2699 W. 3300 North, is owned by the charitable Clark & Christine Ivory Foundation and was annexed into Salt Lake City last summer.

The expanse of meadows, salt grass flats and seasonal wetlands spans a dry lake bed. It sits next to an existing industrial area and is crossed with huge power lines and a section of canal.

The land was a candidate in behind-the-scenes talks for where Utah might choose to locate a new campus for the homeless. State and city officials have since settled on a nearly 16-acre site farther south along 2200 West for that proposed 1,300-bed facility.

As part of folding the Ivory property and another roughly 1,300 acres on the northwest edge of Utah’s capital into city limits, the City Council urged Mayor Erin Mendenhall in June to consider rezoning the 80-acre chunk for light industrial uses.

That proposed change — from the property’s current farmland status to a new manufacturing and light industrial label — goes before the planning commission on Wednesday.

Planners recommend the rezone

Though documents indicate the original rezone request was initiated by the council itself, a representative of the Ivory Foundation is now listed as the applicant.

A report from city planners released Friday, meanwhile, recommends approval of the request, with some key conditions. The council will have the final say on the rezone.

Planners are urging that the city craft a development agreement with the Ivory Foundation to ensure that if the zoning change goes through, commercial spaces be set aside on the land for local businesses and charities. They also are calling for an in-depth inventory of wetlands on the property and that those be kept as natural open space.

The rezone would also require tweaking the master plan spanning that area.

The industrial zoning being sought was created specifically for the Northpoint area. It would allow light manufacturing, industrial and warehouse uses, logistics facilities, business parks, data centers and commercial and transportation uses.

Though its application does not specify any future plans, officials with the Ivory Foundation said portions of the land could be leased for development, sold or donated.

Change will ultimately benefit the vulnerable, foundation says

Clark Ivory, who heads the foundation with his wife, Christine, is also CEO of Ivory Homes, Utah’s largest homebuilder.

An executive with Ivory Homes’ development arm said the foundation is seeking the rezone for now to raise the value of the property so it can further its charitable missions.

“The Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation is all about maximizing positive impact supporting the most vulnerable by improving access to education and affordable housing,” Chris Gamvroulas with Ivory Development said in a statement.

Gamvroulas noted the foundation has given out more than 4,000 scholarships to mostly first-generation college students and is currently building 850 affordable homes in seven projects across the state, including Salt Lake City’s Liberty Wells neighborhood.

After talks with surrounding property owners, Gamvroulas said, the foundation is supportive of efforts to expand an open-space buffer between Northpoint’s residential properties and the area’s rapidly growing logistics and warehouse facilities, while also developing their industrial properties.

“We hope they (area landowners) will be supportive of our efforts to develop the balance of our property,” he said, “in order to benefit affordable housing and student scholarships.”

Last of large wetland playas ‘gone forever’?

Many residents in the Northpoint area have been living on a kind of fault line for years, as the development of massive logistics warehouses and industrial hubs in an otherwise built-out city has steadily advanced westward onto longtime farmlands and open space.

Homes in several pockets along 2200 West and elsewhere now directly abut massive industrial facilities and face the effects of heavy truck traffic moving along the area’s two-lane roads. Over recent years, Salt Lake City has launched several planning efforts in an attempt to mitigate problems, including adoption of an updated Northpoint Small Area Plan in 2023.

“There were lots of promises made to make it not feel industrial and make it feel like there’s a buffer,” said resident Allison Musser, who lives at about 2600 North, off 2200 West. “I just don’t feel like they’ve really delivered on that.”

Musser and other opponents to the rezone say the city had promised to retain natural open spaces in Northpoint, including these 80 Ivory acres, as part of its recent master-planning efforts — and they fear the city is now reneging on those guarantees.

Environmental campaigners, at the same time, are warning that losing the land to development will have dire effects on a wider Great Salt Lake ecosystem, as the land supports nearly 172 species of birds, including Wilson’s phalarope, sandhill cranes, burrowing owls and bald eagles.

Deeda Seed, a Utah spokesperson for the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity, said that in addition to destroying one of the area’s last large wetland playas, an upzone risks harming adjacent environmentally fragile wetlands and bringing more truck traffic, air and light pollution, contaminated runoff and noise.

Seed called the wetland playa in question “irreplaceable.” And once those acres are gone, she said, “they are gone forever.”

Note to readers •This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.