March 8, 2001 Residents face changes in city's plan Marriott-Slaterville designates more open space along waterways By TANNA BARRY_ Standard-Examiner staff MARRIOTT-SLATERVILLE - While the city is still in its infancy, only 1 1/2 years old, Marriott -Slaterville officials feel confident about the city's revised city plan. "I feel it's been a lot of work, a lot of thought and time," said Mayor Keith Butler. "But I think we've met that challenge. We've worked hard on it as a city. Among the additions to the plan are more open space proposals for strips of land bordering waterways and railroads. This, however, does not include land along Mill Creek. Planning Commission Chairman Randy Phipps said the open space is designed to preserve the land as well as discourage development. The move is to protect residents from damage in the flood plain areas along the wa-terways. Phipps said he felt the area along Mill Creek should also have been added to the open space because it is a potential problem. "It will carry more water in the future because of changes being made to the river," he said. Phipps said he will bring Mill Creek up again next year when they are reviewing the general plan. The council also made 12th Street a business district overlay as well as added almost 30 acres of commercial property along Interstate 15. The request for more commercial property came from Frank Blair, who wants to develop part of the property into a camping facility for trailers. His initial request was for more than 100 acres to be changed to commercial zoning, but the council decided against that amount. "The petitioner was asking for way to much at this time," Butler said. "We didn't want to turn our whole city into commercial. We feel like we have a lot of commercial property already available right now." Three percentof the city's 7.3 square miles was zoned for commercial developments before Blair's request. Residents and council members expressed concern about adding more commercial area to the city. Even though the council only approved part of Blair's request, the amount of commercial zoning jumped to 7 percent. While increasing commercial areas, council members voted not to have more high density housing. Phipps said the planning commission wants to zone areas along 1200 West and 700 South so that more houses can be placed there. "It would diversify it just a little bit," he said. "It gave us the opportunity to increase the population without having utilize a lot of land area." The planning commission looked at this area because it was close to the Ogden area and public transportation. However, the city already has zoning for high density housing south of this area that is not being used. "The general consensus of the city was to not have any high density at all," Phipps said. You can reach reporter Tanna Barry at 625-4226 or tbarry@standard.net. 46