2000 Grant Recipient Information
Utah

Envision Utah
Greater Wasatch Area, Utah

Abstract

Since January of 1997, Envision Utah has been working on the creation of a publicly supported Quality Growth Strategy a vision to protect Utah's environment, economic strength, and quality of life for our children. The Envision Utah Public/Private Partnership is a group of 120 diverse and bipartisan leaders working with the community to create a replicable process for planning for and managing rapid growth and development. We have successfully developed an inclusive, educational, and participatory process aimed at developing a broadly supported set of policies that will enable substantial change as directed by the populace. Through the Envision Utah process, a Quality Growth Strategy will be developed to guide businesses, residents, and government bodies in planning for growth management and land use policies and practices well into the next century.

Envision Utah has successfully completed Phase I, developing an inclusive, educational, and participatory process to gather information to develop four alternative growth scenarios for the region. This past January, Envision Utah asked our community to consider the costs and benefits of the four alternative scenarios for the Greater Wasatch Area. We sent over 580,000 surveys to residents asking them to respond to each scenario. Envision Utah recently compiled and analyzed over 17,000 surveys and information gathered in 50 town meetings to develop a broad outline or "vision" of a draft Quality Growth Strategy. The public response showed overwhelming support for a Quality Growth Strategy that would help improve the efficiency of our current transportation system, reduce the impacts of transportation on the environment, and reduce the need for costly future investments in public infrastructure by focusing on compact, mixed-use development pattern. It also suggested that Utah residents would like to see a growth strategy that accommodates new growth by increasing the proportion of new development devoted to in-fill and redevelopment, focuses on efficient access to jobs, services and centers of trade by encouraging walkable communities and concentrating new development along rail transit and existing urban areas. The top four issues of concern for Utah citizens were air quality, water, transportation and land use.

Envision Utah is currently in the heart of Phase II; the development of a final Quality Growth Strategy and the design of realistic steps for implementation. During the past six months, Envision Utah has hosted Partnership discussions, key stakeholder workshops and 50 town meetings to solicit and gather feedback to help further refine and analyze the draft Quality Growth Strategy and to identify realistic ideas for implementation at the local level. Through these outreach efforts, Envision Utah has developed a detailed framework of a draft Quality Growth Strategy that will now be taken to our technical committee for synthesis and analysis to demonstrate its affects on water availability, transportation, infrastructure costs, business and economic development, neighborhoods and demographics, affordable housing, air quality, and open space. We will continue to work with the public throughout the development of the Quality Growth Strategy. In January of 2000, Envision Utah will go to the public for their approval of the final Quality Growth Strategy. Envision Utah will then embark on its most challenging task to date; implementation of the Quality Growth Strategy throughout the Greater Wasatch Area.

The Governor's Office of Planning and Budget and The Coalition for Utah's Future, sponsors of Envision Utah, respectfully request your consideration of a second grant award in the amount of $450,000 to support the final and most critical Phase of the Envision Utah Project: Implementation of a Quality Growth Strategy in the Greater Wasatch Area. The Wasatch Front Regional Council and Mountainland Association of Governments, the two Metropolitan Planning Organizations in the Salt Lake Area, are utilizing their modeling tools to assist Envision Utah in providing technical information to local governments implementing quality growth principles in their communities. Local, private, and public entities have provided over $4,000,000 in cash and in-kind contributions to support project steps taken to date.

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