An Aspen for Utah? Developer submits plan to incorporate new Wasatch County town

It will have skiing, shopping, high-end recreation, breathtaking vistas and everything you would want in a community. The land is surrounded by aspen and spruce trees and gazes on mountains.

To Dean Sellers, who plans to develop the land, it seems like something out of a storybook.

And there's only one name for it, he said: Aspen.

Located 339 miles west of Aspen, Colo., Aspen, Utah, could become Utah's newest town — No. 245 — if Sellers meets requirements for incorporation.

He says he does.

HB466, which the Utah Legislature passed earlier this year, allows a town to incorporate if there are at least 100 residents and certain ownership and land value requirements are met. The bill also takes the final authority for incorporation away from county government and gives it to Lt. Governor Gary Herbert. If 50 percent of the residents and landowners support the petition, the county can't stand in the way of incorporation.

Sellers submitted a petition for incorporation to Wasatch County officials on Thursday.

Within 45 days, he should know if he's got a town.

"What we have is a big, magnificent piece of raw beauty," Sellers says.

Of the 8,366-acre property, which has mostly been grazing land for the past century, Sellers owns 5,700 acres.

The project is slated as a mixed-use community, to include a "world-class" ski resort, golf course, hotels, upscale retail and commercial, lodges, town homes, condominiums, cabins and cottages on lots varying in size.

As the developer and major landowner, Sellers will have the power to select the pool of candidates for mayor and town council when the town incorporates. County Attorney Thomas Low said the Wasatch County Council will then make the selection from that pool.

A fourth-generation Arizonan, Sellers worked as a residential developer for 35 years. He met owners of the cattle property south of Heber City, near the mouth of Daniels Canyon, about seven years ago, and as things fell into place he began buying property and moved his family to Utah in 2004.

It was the right place at the right time, he says.

"I know land. That's all I've done for three and a half decades," Sellers says. "I've looked at the whole western United States with crystal clear glasses."

From his point of view, only two states have a future in growth: Arizona, with its deserts, and Utah, with its mountains.

"I'm tired of the desert side," Sellers says. "I want the mountain side."

Mountains can mean skiing, and another ski resort in the Wasatch Back would be another jewel in Utah's crown of resorts, he said.

But with 13 ski resorts already, can Utah's mountains support another?