Heber City wants to reimagine itself — like Vernal once did — to welcome tourists. Locals ask, what about us?

Heber City • Thursday evenings are special in Heber City’s summer months. The community’s Main Street Park — a few green acres right off the highway — becomes the town’s main social hub.

Local bands play for the crowd, their songs accompanied by small talk and the smells of a collection of foods from a variety of vendors — 12-inch corn dogs drizzled with honey among them.

Some stands sell their trinkets and wares. Others are filled with proselytizers, businesses and public employees advertising with games or pamphlets or — occasionally — free pens.

What became the Heber Market on Main was started in 1998, organized by a radio DJ who was sick of having to drive to Park City to emcee events. More than 25 years later, some point to it as evidence that their community is looking for community — a downtown revitalization; a renaissance of local businesses on pedestrian-friendly paths. Spaces for concerts, festivals and gatherings — and the public infrastructure to support it.

The push isn’t unique to Heber City. Kaysville’s city manager said its leaders are working to revitalize areas that haven’t seen reinvestment in decades. Helper has brought new life and an artistic flair to its Main Street with the help of grant funding.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A steady flow of traffic moves along Main Street in Heber City, at left, on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. A proposed pedestrian corridor known as "C Street” is being pitched between Main Street and 100 West, pictured at right.

Right now, 18 communities across Utah, including Heber City, are working with the Utah Main Street Program, which works with communities to preserve and revitalize local historic districts. Chelsea Gauthier, the program’s manager and state coordinator, said the organization aims to help locals “highlight the unique assets that their communities already have.”

These projects can help people feel more connected, she said. But, as leaders from many cities that have embarked on redevelopment efforts can attest, the excitement can also draw discomfort about potential growing pains.

Lifelong Heber City resident Di Ann Duke Turner, for example, thinks the city’s plans are too catered to tourists and too inviting to wealthy people looking to move here while locals continue to struggle under rising costs of living.

She said her family mourns for their once much-smaller community. Many have left.

Would reimagining the heart of Heber City compromise its soul? Or would it save it?

Tourist destination vs. rest stop

Though Heber City’s downtown was once “a place to go to be seen,” Heber City’s manager, Matt Brower, said it’s become little more than “a place where people stop only for a tank of gas, a hamburger or a bag of ice before driving on some place else.”

He hopes to change that.

In 2020, Heber City approved Envision Heber 2050, a long-term plan to redevelop the city. In 2023, it was updated to include a specific proposal for downtown, after residents, business owners and other community members shared what they wanted.

Among their recommendations? Livelier streets, a walkable core, better tourism and recreation opportunities, plus more accessible public spaces.

To help finance projects and purchase property that could reach those goals, the city aimed to create a Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and asked other taxing entities to support it.

The idea was to allow taxing entities — like Wasatch County and the Wasatch County School District — to continue to receive a set amount of property tax dollars from Heber City’s downtown area. But should tax revenue increase with redevelopment, most of that expected increase — or increment — would instead go toward investing in more CRA projects.

Heber City asked to take 75% of that expected increment from both Wasatch County and the Wasatch County School District for 20 years, or until they hit a contribution cap. Then, each taxing entity would once again receive the entirety of their tax revenue earned from the downtown area.

The hope was the wait would be worth the investment, because the CRA improvements aim to increase property values and business opportunities and subsequently raise the area’s tax base.

Through the CRA, Heber City aimed to raise about $22 million in increment to reinvest, and city officials hoped to finalize an agreement by the end of last year. It would have gone toward projects like a centralized public parking structure, a pedestrian plaza and a better overall downtown experience.

But not everyone was on board: The County Council voted not to participate, and the school district — the most lucrative potential player in the game — never even brought the issue to a vote.

In an April 2024 meeting, where the city presented the plan to the school district’s board of education, board leaders brought up several concerns. School board member Kim Dickerson said she heard the city would be using education dollars on the CRA project, though City Council members assured her that was incorrect — that only a portion of the increment would go toward the CRA, but none of the district’s existing tax base.

Still, the conversation stalled. A request for comment from the school district was not immediately returned.

While Heber City and the Central Utah Water Conservancy District are still involved in reinvesting their increments, their contributions alone fall far short of what was initially hoped.

“It won’t impact the planning,” Brower said. “Where it will impact us is in the execution stage. … It will likely slow us down in some areas. It will require us to maybe think about phasing differently.”

Why Utah cities like Vernal are using their pasts to plan for the future

The Utah Main Street Program is managed by the state’s Historic Preservation Office, and Gauthier said the community proposals they receive often hope to inject historic energy into fading areas in new ways.

Agriculture was once Wasatch County’s main moneymaker. Now, Brower looks to the lack of a significant economic driver in Heber City other than growth and sees commercial opportunity. A reimagined downtown, he hopes, could drive tourism dollars and lighten tax burdens on local property owners.

Quinn Bennion, Vernal’s city manager, said that when he returned to his northeastern Utah hometown seven years ago after a 25-year hiatus, he counted 20 vacant downtown storefronts.

It got bad enough that at one point, people worked with landlords to print photos of what the shuttered storefronts used to look like to display in their windows, “just to kind of bring some vibrancy” to the area that was once “the commercial heartbeat of the community.” But that changed as larger companies set up base on the west end of the city, drawing attention that was once devoted to the town’s core.

Eventually, the taxable value of downtown wasn’t just stagnating — it actually started to fall. But after a year-long planning process with the public, Bennion said they adopted a plan to revitalize it.

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Like Heber City, Vernal looked to launch a CRA project to generate funding, though it focused less on public infrastructure projects and more on grants for commercial property owners to improve their property.

Concerned with that falling taxable value, Bennion said other taxing entities signed on, and the city took out a $2.1 million loan on “anticipated increases in property taxes.”

The CRA project also funds grants to help people demolish old, unsightly structures or to rehabilitate historic buildings to bring them up to code, though those two options have only been utilized a handful of times.

With 55 projects now completed and five in progress, he said he now counts only five shuttered storefronts — some only closed because the owner hasn’t decided what they want to do — and the property value increase has been much higher than anticipated, more than making up for how much it had dropped.

The result, Bennion describes, is a community that more closely matches the idealistic downtown he said he grew up with.

“It’s been really fun to watch this transformation happen,” Bennion said.

But despite Vernal’s successes, its plan, too, didn’t come without detractors.

During a community meeting about the proposal in December 2021 — shortly before city leaders approved the CRA project — some residents expressed concern that residential property taxes in the project area would rise. Though many were supportive, others also worried their businesses would see increased taxes without increased opportunity.

But after the council came on board, six other entities had signed on to the CRA project by April 2022.

During a Wasatch County Council meeting in November, where Bennion shared Vernal’s success with county leaders weighing involvement in Heber City’s CRA, the public reaction was also mixed. But according to Brower’s count, supporters outnumbered those opposed two to one.

Shelley Ryan, a co-owner of the local Chick’s Cafe, was among the minority. She pointed to construction headaches already caused by to Heber City’s decision to build a new bandshell stage at Main Street Park. The Thursday summer markets also impact her parking, she said, with non-customers often filling her cafe’s spots.

She didn’t buy that the city’s plans would help businesses.

“It’s a bunch of bull,” she said, “and if you do it, you might as well just tell us goodbye.”

Even hearing frustrations, several county leaders thought it was worth the investment.

“I think we have a responsibility as a county council for all Wasatch taxpayers,” Luke Searle said before voting in favor. He hoped an increase in commercial tax revenue would alleviate the burden of those struggling to keep up with the area’s cost of living.

But now-former County Council member Steve Farrell disagreed. “I’m going to vote no, because I don’t think Heber City’s like Vernal,” he said at the time. He also felt property values would rise regardless.

The county had its own concerns, too, including a courthouse expansion and a new administration building in the works, he added. The school district was separately building a new high school and planning for projected enrollment growth.

The county motion ultimately failed, 3-3. The council’s chair abstained, because he owns a commercial building that would be affected, and said, “if this is successful, it would make me money.”

Months later, Searle said Tuesday there hasn’t been continued conversation about CRA involvement, though he said Heber City asked them to reconsider shortly after the vote.

“But we do have a new County Council member, so that could be a different conversation,” he added.

How Heber City could still change

Despite the setback, Heber City’s downtown aspirations remain.

It could take longer, Brower said, or the city may need to consider more private-sector partnerships.

He thought some of the negative feelings likely spawned from word-of-mouth misinformation, and wondered if the pressure the school district and county were under with their own projects and — and potential misunderstandings about the CRA — led to their decisions.

He specified that Heber City’s growth “is not a policy-driven thing,” but rather a common challenge that many Utah communities face.

“[T]o become a destination,” he said, he thinks downtown Heber City will need to be more dense than it currently is.

But if visitors eat, shop or otherwise spend their money and leave, that tax money still benefits locals.

“That’s what we hope to have happen,” he said.

In the meantime, he said the city is looking into how different grants could still support the work. He sees a lot of opportunity.

“Great things do not happen by happenstance,” he said. “They happen through strategic planning and investment, and that in turn encourages the private sector to come in and capitalize upon the plans and the zoning.”

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