What do you want Ephraim to look like 50 years from now? ‘Open house’ seeks the answer

EPHRAIM—A crowd filled the Ephraim City Council chambers July 7 to consider the future of the city or, as Community Development Director Bryan Kimball put it, to answer the question: “What do you want Ephraim to look like 50 years from now?”

Much of what was described as a community development open house focused on educating residents about the city’s planning and zoning history and how development trends have changed in recent years.

The meeting also included public input, along with a promise from city staff to intensify outreach as the city begins revising its general plan next year.

About three weeks earlier, on June 17, the city council approved a six-month moratorium on applications for multifamily housing and multi-lot subdivisions in much of the city.

The purpose of the moratorium, City Manager Katie Witt explained, was to give staff, the planning and zoning commission and the city council time to review and update city codes to reflect Ephraim’s current vision, development standards and long-term character.

The moratorium does not affect developments that had already been approved or were in the final review process as of June 17. Road work and infrastructure improvements may continue even if a subdivision has not received sign-off. Individual homes on existing lots and commercial projects also are exempt.

The moratorium “has a hard end date of Dec. 31 of this year,” City Planner Megan Spurling told attendees. If the city’s culinary water situation improves and revised development codes are completed before then, the moratorium could end sooner.

Kimball said Snow College had been the driving force behind many of Ephraim’s development and zoning decisions for more than 50 years.

“The focus was, ‘How do we deal with a couple thousand college students coming in every year?'” he said.

When he joined the city staff 22 years ago, Kimball said he received almost daily calls from developers saying, “I hear Snow College is growing. Can we come and build a 12-plex?”

Land surrounding the college was zoned R-4, the city’s highest-density residential designation, to accommodate large student housing complexes. Farther from campus, zoning stepped down to R-3, which allows up to triplexes, then R-2 for duplexes west of Main Street. Near the city limits, land was generally zoned R-1 for single-family homes or R-A, a residential-agriculture zone that also permits farm animals.

Kimball said the college is still a major influence on the city.

“Walmart came to Ephraim because we have the college. And now, because we have Walmart, Wendy’s and Arby’s came to Ephraim,” he said. “The college creates a buzz that other communities don’t have, just an influence that ripples and keeps going.”

He added that recent sales tax figures showed Ephraim collects more sales tax than all other municipalities in Sanpete County combined.

As commercial growth expanded to the north and south ends of town, where residential development already existed, the city chose to allow housing in the C-2 commercial zone.

“We didn’t want to make existing uses go away, so we allowed residential in the C-2 zone,” Kimball said. “You can go up to the R-4 density level.”

Kimball said development trends changed significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic and after housing costs rose sharply.

Instead of requests for student housing, he said he now hears from residents who cannot afford newly built homes and are seeking different housing options.

“I’m getting daily phone calls now saying, ‘Hey, can we do some medium density? Can we do some townhomes?'” he said. More affordable housing fits within the C-2 zoning criteria, leading to recent residential and commercial projects.

Kimball said the changes in development patterns prompted both the moratorium and the open house.

“A lot of the codes we’re reviewing now were in place 30 years ago, 40 years ago,” he said. “Do those still fit what we need today?”

“I think things have shifted from what they were 30 years ago. The demand has shifted. We’re trying to get a handle on what our codes should say so we reflect what the current situation is. We don’t want to be dealing with 50-year-old codes if they don’t apply to us.”

Kimball said Ephraim’s population has doubled during the past two decades. While growth at Snow College has contributed, recent newcomers include former residents returning to care for aging parents; employees recruited from outside Sanpete County to work in education, local government, agriculture and health care; people from urban areas who want to retire in a small town; and people who can now work remotely.

Alluding to the variety of housing types proposed in Ephraim, Spurling shared her own experience growing up in Iowa, not in a small town but in a big city.

“I grew up in apartments and duplexes and single-family homes,” she said. “I never viewed one as being better than the other. It was just home. That shapes my passion … so everyone has a safe place to call home, regardless of what that looks like.”

Staff projected images of single-family homes, duplexes and townhome developments to gather audience feedback.

One picture was a “flex home,” a single-family house built on a smaller lot than typically allowed in the city.

Last year, the council approved a new R-1-B zoning designation for flex homes to help lower costs and create starter homes for smaller families, Spurling said.

“We feel like it’s a good buffer between your traditional single-family neighborhood with larger lots, then you have these smaller lots and then apartments,” she said.

Townhome layouts were also shown. Under current zoning, Spurling said, 14 townhomes may be built on eight-tenths of an acre, while a 5-acre site could accommodate up to 94 units.

She said current regulations require more land per unit as developments become larger, reducing overall density.

“I feel from the feedback I’m getting that’s what bothers people,” she said. They find that some projects feel “very dense and compact.”

The city council has also increased landscaping requirements in multi-family complexes. In such developments, the city now also requires amenities, such as a playground, pickleball court or outdoor gathering area.

Some developers have resisted building sidewalks through their projects. The planning commission and city council have pushed back. Now the city requires sidewalks along all roads in a development where cars will travel.

Spurling asked the audience if there was anything the city could write into its codes “that would require developers to put some personality into their projects,…maybe some different roof lines” or mixed forms of housing such as 10 townhomes, four flex homes and four duplexes on the same site.

Using the example of a 94-unit townhome project, Spurling said increasing minimum unit sizes, landscaping and amenities could reduce the total number of homes to 72. However, she cautioned that too many requirements could make projects financially unfeasible.

Both Kimball and Spurling emphasized that state law limits the city’s authority over development.

“If an application comes in and they meet all the rules that we have, we have to approve them,” Kimball said.

One resident said city officials and residents did not seem to be working together.

“As you speak, the residents are ‘other,'” she said.

Witt acknowledged the concern.

“The city hasn’t done as good a job as we’d like in involving residents,” she said. “But we’re getting our feet on the ground. We’re going to work together to come up with the future of Ephraim City.”

Another attendee said rents in Ephraim already exceed $1,000 per month and warned that reducing density while adding new requirements could push rents closer to $2,000, undermining affordability.

Another participant said every generation faces challenges affording housing.

“I don’t think we can be all things to all people,” she said. “If you build a bunch of low-income housing, you’ll have a bunch of low-income people.”

Another resident said much of the discussion centered on new development while existing neighborhoods were being overlooked.

“How many neighborhoods are really nice neighborhoods?” she asked, noting that several homes and yards in her neighborhood have fallen into disrepair. “Have we looked at cleaning up what we have?”