South Salt Lake • City officials struck a careful compromise this week between the desires of a car dealership to expand its parking lot and fears of encroachment from adjacent homeowners.
The South Salt Lake City Council agreed Wednesday night to rezone two of four residential lots next to Mark Miller Subaru Midtown at 3535 S. State St. for commercial uses, a major step toward the dealership’s goal of clearing out and paving the properties to make more room for its inventory.
Two other vacant home lots the dealership also owns in the small neighborhood will be left alone for now, under a bargain that Jonathan Weidenhamer, the city’s community and economic development director, called “splitting the baby.”
City leaders, Weidenhamer said, could let the prominent business proceed with part of its expansion plans without being “in conflict with your neighborhood goals and your plans for affordable housing.”
“All things are a balance,” he told the council. And while the city acknowledged the dealership’s contribution to its tax base, Weidenhamer said, officials were also weighing its requests against South Salt Lake’s wider vision for how it will grow.
Residents along Winslow Avenue, just off busy State Street, had feared the rezone would bring the dealership’s asphalt footprint too far into their growing community. They had launched a leafleting and yard sign campaign in recent weeks, urging the city to deny the requests.
About a dozen residents, many of them living on Winslow and other streets abutting the car lot, spoke Wednesday in opposition to rezoning the four properties.
Protecting communities as the city grows
The council voted unanimously to rezone a lot at 130 S. Winslow Ave., which features a home converted to the dealership’s marketing office and is out of compliance with city code. That will be torn down, under the dealership’s plans.
All but one council member — Shane Siwik — voted to rezone the other property along 200 East, which, although empty, is zoned for multifamily residential uses.
“I don’t see how we’re complying with our general plan by paving and parking cars,” Siwik said. “It does nothing to build more residential community.”
Talia Walker, one of the neighborhood organizers, called Wednesday’s compromise “a win for us.” She said it was disheartening, though, that the council had abbreviated public comment by limiting residents to one-minute statements, calling that “a violation of our rights.”
“Let’s hope,” Walker added, “that Mark Miller starts actually acting like the good neighbor they say they are.”
Jeff Miller, CEO and general manager of the decades-old auto dealership, said Wednesday’s outcome would help it grow its 6.7-acre site to meet demands from Subaru to keep more vehicles on hand — in effect, letting the business remain in the city.
“We want to stay in South Salt Lake,” Miller said.
The dealership will also continue to work with city officials, he said, on a strip of public right of way it hopes to absorb on its eastern flank as well as with neighbors over complaints about the lot’s overhead lighting and a trash dumpster kept by some of their homes.
Shoring up rough edges
Miller rejected assertions from Walker and other residents that the company had originally bought up the homes in question and let them deteriorate in an effort to strengthen its case later for the rezones.
“We have been working with the city development office since the day we bought these properties to get this done,” he said. The general manager also rebutted assertions the business ultimately intended to encroach on Winslow Avenue in the future, saying it had not acted on several chances to buy additional home lots along the street.
The city’s general plan has that portion of South Salt Lake sandwiched between a wide commercial corridor around State Street and swaths designated for single-family homes to the east. But that plan, Siwik noted, is “general. It’s not binding.”
With the compromise forged, Eliza Ungricht, deputy director of community and economic development, said the city hopes to gradually bring the car lot into full compliance with its general plan by shoring up several land use anomalies left over from when the site was originally annexed into its boundaries in 1998.
As part of redeveloping and consolidating the dealership’s land holdings there into one lot, Ungricht said the city also hopes to impose additional requirements on its lighting and parking lot to offset their impacts on surrounding homes.
Several elected leaders and residents said the city needed to continue to protect and nurture its residential areas, especially as South Salt Lake sees rapid development of thousands of new homes in its boundaries.
“That’s kind of become our theme of the year: saving neighborhoods,” at-large council member Natalie Pinkney said in an interview after Wednesday’s meeting, “and ensuring that we can grow communities just like Winslow Avenue.”
