Amid a major police presence, West Valley City Council charts future of Redwood Drive-In property

West Valley City • Four months after vendors and organizers found out from a bulletin board posting at West Valley City Hall that the land where their swap meet is located may be rezoned for a housing development, they received an answer on what will happen.

The West Valley City Council voted Tuesday night to approve the petition from Utah home builder EDGEHomes to rezone the property of the Redwood Drive-In Theatre and Swap Meet at 3688 S. Redwood Road to allow for a housing development. EdgeHomes’ plan proposes 300 housing units: 40 condos, 244 townhomes and 16 single-family homes, with room for 214 parking spots.

The vote was the final step after the West Valley City planning commission approved the request at the end of June to forward the application to the City Council.

On Tuesday evening, about 200 people packed into the City Hall room. Ahead of the meeting, cultural dancers with drums took to the front steps of City Hall to perform as supporters of the swap meet rallied to come inside. They carried signs that bore sayings like “Save the Swap Meet” and “No More Displacement.” Many wore face masks that said “No Rezone.”

When the vote was announced, supporters of the swap meet erupted into loud booing. Some wiped away tears, while others yelled in English and Spanish.

There was heavy police presence at the meeting, alongside flyers with guidelines from the West Valley Police Department discouraging unlawful activity like property damage and violence of any kind.

The Salt Lake Tribune has previously reported that many vendors rely on the swap meet as their sole source of income, and that it is a community space for immigrants.

Public comment lasted about an hour. More than three dozen people spoke, all of them against the rezoning. In June, at the first planning commission meeting, there were three hours of impassioned public comment.

Doris Marquez, one of the first commenters, told The Tribune her parents are political exiles from Guatemala who came to Utah in 2006.

“My father is a vendor and he raised all of us on the income from the swap meet ... through my father’s income, all the children were able to become college educated, tax-paying citizens,” she told council members. Please don’t allow this blow to our economy in West Valley and to our culture here.”

Many commenters spoke on behalf of the wider community, like Michael Schoon, a teacher from Hunter High School, who said he was there to represent his students: 150 of them signed a paper he brought with him.

“We have talked about the drive-in and the swap meet, and they wanted the City Council to be aware that they do not agree with the rezoning. I’m proud of this community and my students who are here today standing up for something they cherish and something that they’re so proud of, the swap meet,” Schoon said. “This community makes up your constituents. If you vote ‘yes’ on rezoning, you are ignoring your community.”

The council members did not deliberate on the vote for long.

Council member Tom Huynh sympathized with the people in the crowd and shared appreciation for their remarks, saying, “I hear you. I came here long ago. Just like you, I worked multiple jobs and I want to do the best to serve the community and people around me, that’s how I got here.”

Huynh grew up in Vietnam. In 2011, he became the “first ethnic minority” to be elected to the West Valley City Council.

Several times, Huynh posed a question for his fellow council members: Whether there was anything they could do to help the swap meet vendors? He even proposed moving the swap meet to a vacant parking lot on 3100 South.

Supporters of the swap meet have said between 500 and 700 vendors are at risk of being displaced.

Huynh reminded his fellow council members that West Valley City is a minority-majority city.” Are we serving well?” he asked the council.

West Valley City Mayor Karen Lang said the proper place to propose that idea is on a future agenda during a study session. “There’s been numerous businesses that have left the city ... But as a council, it’s not our responsibility to find them a new place or help them.”

Cristian Gutierrez, a vendor who has led the campaign to stop the rezoning, started an online petition on Change.org that garnered over 22,000 signatures.

“Development is supposedly for the people,” he said at the meeting, “but if development comes at a cost of destruction and erasure of our community for the sake of profit, it no longer meets its initial purpose.”

The land that is home to the drive-in is owned by California-based De Anza Land and Leisure Corp. and is valued at more than $1.3 million, according to the Salt Lake County assessor’s office.

In a letter to the city, the company cited the advancing age of the family members who own De Anza, as well as increasing costs, limited operating days, the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect on the movie industry of last year’s actors’ and writers’ strikes as reasons the business “no longer yields an acceptable rate of return.”

The Redwood Drive-In, opened in 1949, is the last drive-in movie theater operating along the Wasatch Front.

It is unclear where the vendors of the swap meet will go next, but operations won’t immediately cease on the Redwood property.

Outside City Hall after the vote, in chilly late-summer air, Gutierrez tried to motivate the crowd.

“No pierdas la esperanza,” he said, which translates to, “Don’t lose hope.”

West Valley City residents have a voice, he said, and council members are not adequately representing them.

”They did not hear anything we had to say ... they don’t care about us,” he said, “we don’t have representation here in West Valley City.”

Others chimed in to encourage residents to remember the council’s decision when time comes to vote for representatives.

”By next year,” Gutierrez said, “we have to make sure that City Council represents us.”