"If we expect developers to do it, we wanted to step up and do it ourselves," Mills said. "We're years behind other cities. We had to do something else as an incentive to bring new people in."

The downside

If there is a downside to the beautification of the state's interchanges, says BYU's Richard Jackson, it may be their intended result.

Big-box retailers may generate a bundle of sales tax revenue, Jackson says, but they don't create many high-paying jobs, they kill mom-and-pop stores, and they can destroy historic downtowns.

Springville has long prided itself on its historic downtown, for example, but its new interchange will push the city one step closer to looking like every other town along the Wasatch Front.

And in Lehi, which is now enhancing its I-15 interchange, neon-new development has partially obscured its most recognizable landmark: the Lehi Roller Mills.

"It's just ubiquitous housing developments and urban sprawl all along I-15," says Richard Jackson. New York, San Francisco, Seattle, even Salt Lake, he says, because of the LDS Church, have distinctive downtowns

"If you don't have that sense of place people won't feel as much allegiance to it. They won't be proud to be a part of it."

But it goes beyond aesthetics. Downtowns that are allowed to decline are much more difficult to re-develop, Jackson says, and often become hot spots for crime. Districts in states of decline also attract transients, he said.

The measures that cities are taking to draw big-box retailers, which include landscaping offramps, are also a concern to some state legislators, says Lincoln Schurtz, legislative coordinator for the Utah League of Cities and Towns.

"We want to get cities on the same page as the state," he said. "The state wants to create jobs; most cities want a Wal-Mart because with sales tax it makes it a whole lot easier to balance your budget at the end of the year."

Schurtz said legislation is in the works that would change the way sales tax revenue is distributed. Instead of just awarding cities for the amount of sales tax revenue they generate, the state would also reward cities that create high-paying jobs.

In Pleasant Grove, not everyone is excited about the new interchange.

Main Street merchants such as Melanie Miller complain they have tried to sway city leaders for the past 10 years to give them the kind of attention and money they are now giving the new "gateway" area.