EAGLE MOUNTAIN -- Developer John Walden admits he didn't build cities in his sandbox when he was little.
Now he's correcting the oversight.It's been almost two years since he and two friends began building a town from scratch in a nearly unpopulated area of Utah County. And despite some bumps along the way, they are pleased with the progress.
Walden, a real estate developer, and physicians Scott Gettings and Andrew Zorbis, who all own houses in Park City and come to Utah to ski, bought 8,000 acres of land in the Cedar Valley in 1994 at a bankruptcy auction for $2.5 million. Walden was alerted to the land by a friend living in Utah, Nick Berg, because it contained 5,000-acre feet of water, water Walden needed to serve his other developments in Utah: Big Pole Estates in the Heber Valley and Falcon Crest in the Ogden Valley.
But when Walden visited the Cedar Valley to view his property, he was astonished at its windswept beauty.
"It's beautiful. The air is clear. I was so taken that I stayed long enough to see the sunset. It's like 'Home on the Range,'" Walden said.
As a businessman and developer, Walden saw a real opportunity to profit from Utah's growth; development became a viable option.
"If there was going to be growth, and of course, there is, the natural flow was going to be here," Walden told the Deseret News during one of his monthly visits to Utah.
Because of the property's remoteness, 16 miles west of Lehi, providing services to a single development proved outrageously expensive, he said. Berg said they flirted with the idea of forming a new county. But that idea quickly washed away in favor of incorporation.
No one lived in the area they wanted to incorporate, so they, along with developer Debbie Hooge, who lives in what is now in Eagle Mountain, approached those living in two communities about five miles away, Cedar Pass Ranch, a community of large lots, and Harvest Haven, a polygamous community on the opposite side of Highway 73. They signed and the town, at 24 square miles, incorporated in December 1996.
The Walden group owns a third of the city, 7,000 acres are controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management, and the rest is owned by the state or private property owners.
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The county appointed a mayor and city council, three of whom were developers working with Walden, including Hooge as mayor.
That made it easy for the developers to come up with their idea of an ideal city.
Walden, Gettings and Zorbis began pouring money into the project, at least $11 million so far.
They insist the cost is worth it and don't expect it would have been cheaper to do it any other way.
"It doesn't cost more to do it right," Gettings said.
They hired a master planner to map out the perfect town, with people living within walking distance of work, shopping and recreation. Because the town is so big, Walden and Gettings said it will be made of more than one village center, a cluster of houses, parks and schools around a small commercial area. The first village center is already under construction with a fire station and several small houses. The entire town has already been planned out, right down to the where the walking overpasses will go.
Their top goal is to provide affordable housing for Utahns who can't afford to buy among the skyrocketing prices along the Wasatch Front. The first homes being built in Eagle Mountain, at Eagle Landing, are in the affordable range, around $100,000.
"We want to be serving the needs of the people of Utah," Gettings said. "We bought the land inexpensively and want to pass that onto buyers."
Planning consultant David Conine said the town is designed on a human scale with essential services within walking distance. It will also be less car-oriented and more pedestrian-friendly.
"A porch streetscape instead of a garage-door streetscape," Conine said.
And Walden's group has a backup plan should house prices begin to soar. They are not developing or selling a portion of their land and will build more affordable housing if necessary.
"We don't have the lack of land in this area," Gettings said.
Walden said the idea is similar to Disney's experimental city near Orlando called Celebration, but it will be different because even though Celebration was supposed to have affordable housing, the values have steadily increased. They don't expect that to happen to Eagle Mountain because of the availability of land.
Walden believes that even if the area grows to the size of a big city, it still won't have big-city problems.
"It might have as many people as Salt Lake, but it will never be Salt Lake," Walden said.
Will all these plans translate into a lower crime rate? "Absolutely," Walden, Gettings and Conine all said together.
For now, the developers trust Utahns tired of crowded Salt Lake City will move to Eagle Mountain and endure the commute to either Salt Lake or Provo. But in the long run, they hope the city will be self-sustaining, where those who work can work in Eagle Mountain.
"We will consider it less than a success if it's a bedroom community for Provo and Orem. In fact, we will have failed," Conine said.
Projections look good. Although only numbering about 330 people now, Eagle Mountain is expected to rival Provo-Orem in size. In 17 days in November, 15 homes were sold, said Jerry Wilson, town treasurer. Sixty-seven homes are occupied and 152 currently under construction.
Walden's goals, however, have been checked by those living in what is now Eagle Mountain who were angered by the incorporation and impending development. Despite the developer's lofty goals and money, those residents no longer feel powerless.
One of them is Dan Valentine, who along with his wife, now city recorder Janet Valentine, moved to the Cedar Valley because of congestion and construction in the Salt Lake Valley. He still commutes to work in Sandy.
Valentine fought against incorporation but finally accepted the inevitable. The couple talked about moving, but then they had a new idea. Since Eagle Mountain was now a city, that meant it had to be represented by those living there.
Dan ran for City Council in 1997 and won. He replaced a developer on the council. The other council member who was a developer was also ousted.
So instead of complaining about what was happening in the valley, Valentine said he can work on regulating development from the inside. He's concerned it will run rampant.
"I'm in a mode of trying to do a combination of damage control and mitigation," Valentine said.
He said he was afraid the developers would turn the town into what they wanted, not necessarily what the townspeople wanted.
Valentine said he doesn't want Eagle Mountain to become "Waldenville," the moniker he gave the town when it was mostly controlled by the wealthy developer.
People's voice
A similar quest for elbow room led new Mayor Rob Bateman to Eagle Mountain.
Bateman, his wife and six children moved to Cedar Pass to get away from Alpine, where he was a city councilman. He said even Alpine was getting too congested for their family.
"We actually came out here thinking we'd be getting away from it all, and it followed us," Bateman said.
He was elected to the city council in 1997 and appointed to replaced the first mayor, Debbie Hooge, a developer, who was re-elected last year and resigned two months ago for personal reasons.
Both Bateman and Valentine believe a developer-less city council is best for the city.
"We need to have the regulators regulating the regulated," said Bateman, who works in Orem at a PROMODEL Corporation, an engineering software company.
Hooge, who lives in Cedar Pass Ranch, used to work closely with Walden but now wants to focus on the development of the ranch, which has the same goals on preserving open space as the Walden group.
First, the council created a conflict of interest statement, in which all elected officials had to declare a conflict of interest when voting on something.
It's something Bateman says should have happened before.
"Now we've got the regulators regulating those who should be regulated, not the regulators regulating themselves," he said.
But both sides, those who live there and those developing the area, seem to see eye-to-eye on most issues, such as preserving open space. Bateman said the idea of "positive incentives" for developers to keep open space is an idea retained by the council. For example, those who own land up the hill will be encouraged to dedicate it as open space.
"I don't want a city where people are looking down on each other," Bateman said.
The town was purposely incorporated to leave huge green space between existing towns, Cedar Fort and Fairfield. They especially wanted to preserve the integrity of Cedar Fort as the site where U.S. Army Gen. Albert Sydney Johnson and his troops set up Camp Floyd in 1858 and left in 1860 to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War.
But Berg, who started up the project with Walden and is now principal broker for Eagle Mountain Real Estate, L.C., expressed some frustration with the council's plan. He seemed surprised that those living in Eagle Mountain would want to have a say.
But he said he's accepted it and plans to work with the city.
"It is a public city and we have to respect that," he said.
Walden, too, seemed frustrated, especially since it was his idea to start the city.
"At first, we didn't need representation from the people, because there weren't any," Walden said.
But he is philosophical about the change.
"A king is a lot easier than a democracy. It's faster, but not better," he said.
So instead of controlling an entire city, Walden is back to controlling what happens to 8,000 acres, or a third of Eagle Mountain.
Town administrator John Newman said that was to be expected.
"When people begin to move into a community, they begin to take ownership of it," he said.
But Walden believes that in the end, his goal of developing a beautiful area and relieving some of the congestion along the Wasatch Front will be realized.
He sees himself as continuing the tradition started in Utah in 1847 when the first members of the LDS Church emigrated to a territory that was almost barren.
"I'm a new kind of pioneer."