Sale of land to Rowland Hall is debated

Salt Lake City Council members on Tuesday night peppered city employees with questions about 13 acres of undeveloped land on the city's east side.

The Mt. Olivet Cemetery owns the plot, located at roughly 1500 East and 800 South, and wants to sell the land to Rowland Hall-St. Mark's private school so it can expand its campus. The school operates a grade school just east of the plot and wants to move its high school from 970 E. 800 South.

But neighbors and city planners aren't behind the sale, which is still pending. They say the open space should stay that way — sans traffic, development and buildings. The Yalecrest Community Council, whose boundary borders the land, and the citywide Planning Commission have recommended denying the sale, which would require a zoning change and an update of the city's master plan.

Council members questioned the city's policy on open space (it has nothing formal), the school's traffic impact study (Councilwoman Nancy Saxton discounted it), the land's former and current lives (alfalfa fields and fenced-in grassland, respectively), and allowed uses for land zoned open space (mortuary, developed park and recreation, among others).

"It seems like the key issue in this debate is the issue of open space and needing to protect open space," said Dave Buhler, council chairman.

But Yalecrest Community Council Chairman Jim Webster said his neighborhood primarily objects to the traffic from Rowland Hall's primary school.

"We've had nothing but problems with the Rowland Hall traffic," Webster said. "They have not provided a benefit to the community in our opinion."

The public can comment on the proposed sale and zone change at an April 4 hearing.

Buhler and other council members expressed interest in restricting the amount of development on the site through a conservation easement or a deed restriction. Rowland Hall has said it wants to keep several acres of the land open for soccer and baseball fields.

If the city approves the sale, which could not happen before the April 4 public hearing, Rowland Hall would have to come back to planners for a subdivision on the property.

Bob Steiner, a Rowland Hall trustee, said the school wants to consolidate its campuses rather than have parents ferry siblings between the two. But the school doesn't have the money to build another high school now. Regardless, Steiner said he would look at permanent restrictions on the playing fields as open space.

"It's in our own interest as a school to keep the playing fields" as open space, Steiner said. "The area will be open to the public."

The cemetery needs to sell the land to finance ongoing maintenance costs, said Bill Adams, president of the cemetery's board of trustees. Most of that maintenance goes toward landscaping that is made more difficult by trees, headstones and monuments. But the cemetery's board wants to be certain it has enough money for roughly 90 more years of burials before the cemetery is full, Adams said. Before the cemetery could sell, though, it would have to seek approval from Congress, which established the cemetery in 1909.

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