Draper bond falls short

A $7 million open-space bond passed by Draper voters is not stretching as far as residents had hoped, leaving some feeling shortchanged by the deal.

After opening their checkbooks in the November election to preserve open space in the city's Corner Canyon area, resident Gordon Banks said, residents are now surprised to hear the money is not enough to acquire the full 1,035 acres.

But city leaders say there was no promise that the bond could buy the entire canyon tucked between the Wasatch Range and Traverse Ridge in the valley's south end.

"My understanding was that the city had negotiated with landowners and it was just a matter of them handing the money over and they became owners of the land," Banks said.

But the exchange has not been that simple. An appraisal done after the November bond election showed the price of the entire property was out of the city's reach. Now, city officials are negotiating with Corner Canyon landowners, a conglomeration of several irrigation companies and Riverton city, to see how much land the city can afford.

But Draper resident Summer Pugh said many citizens only voted to increase their property taxes for the bond because they thought the entire canyon would be safe from development.

Now, Pugh said, she and others are finding out the landowners can dictate to the city how many acres they can have.

"The landowners are saying, 'You can only afford this amount of property with your $7 million, and we're going to get the rest,' " she said. "They're calling the shots and I'm worried we're just going to end up with the leftovers."

Much of the land in the Corner Canyon area is undevelopable due to slopes exceeding 30 percent grade, and Pugh said the property owners may be overcharging the city for land they could not use anyway.

But Hollis Hunt, attorney for the Corner Canyon Property Owners, LLC, said the landowners agreed to give the city its first pick of lands in the area: sensitive watershed regions and wildlife habitats. The property owners will retain all water rights in the canyon.

The city's $7 million, Hunt said, will likely buy about 700 acres in the lower Corner Canyon region, but landowners want to develop acreage on the upper portion. To do that, the city will likely have to change zoning on the land from an existing agricultural zone to denser residential.

"Westerners feel that any open land is public land, but that's not the case here; it's privately owned," Hunt said. "Everyone has just kind of said, 'Hey that's ours,' but that's an inaccurate perception."