Lehi's Planning Commission will hold a public hearing tonight on the highly anticipated 85-acre mixed-use development, which would erect Utah's tallest building along with thousands of homes, condos and shops, just down the road from Cabela's.

"This is a big project," Gehry said. "But I will spend time here so this is not an alien. It will be unique, it will be different - but in the end it will fit."

Developer and business mogul Brandt Andersen said, if all goes smoothly, he anticipates some infrastructure could be laid east of Interstate 15 just south of the Point of the Mountain as early as next year.

The plans - still conceptual at this point - call for 2,499 residential and commercial units, an upscale shopping center, restaurants and a 450-foot-high hotel that would surpass Utah's tallest high-rise, the 435-foot-high LDS Church Office Building in Salt Lake City.

Gehry also is designing an outdoor amphitheater for concerts and an arena for the Utah Flash, Andersen's NBA Development League team.

Andersen calls the area "the Wasatch Front's most-recognizable piece of land" and predicts the project will be a breath of fresh air.

"This will be unlike any experience you've ever had from the most creative mind I've ever met," he said.

Gehry, the mastermind behind architectural wonders such as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, hopes his project will engender a sense of pride in Utah.

"This is not a big phony-baloney thing. But it's hard to talk about it because I don't want to sell it too much," Gehry said. "This is something that's being done with honesty and care."

And through all the anticipation, some ask: Why Lehi?

Brenda Case Scheer, dean of the University of Utah's College of Architecture and Planning, said downtown Salt Lake City would be too restrictive for a Gehry project. She expects the Lehi development to become a landmark and a destination.

"I don't think, with Frank Gehry, you ever talk about something that's going to blend in," she said. "It's like asking, 'Will Disney World fit in?' It doesn't. It's a thing in itself. The intention is to make it a destination place."

Gehry said he resisted the Lehi project at first because he is getting old. But much of the reason he signed on lies within Andersen, the 29-year-old visionary who approached his staff with the idea.

"If I'm 78 and got 'X' number of projects, I'm trying to pick ones I really want to do," Gehry said. "I'm getting picky about who I work with. I have to like the people and the project and believe there's potential in it - and that I may get to see it in my lifetime."

Lehi Mayor Howard Johnson is thrilled about the project, which he calls "totally out of the ordinary."

He is less thrilled about the promised strain on an already-struggling infrastructure.

He and other Lehi leaders have expressed discomfort with a coming I-15/Mountain View Corridor connector that they fear will split their Utah County city in two.

"I'm just apprehensive about the traffic," Johnson said.

"Nobody wants to build roads to take care of the people they're housing."

sgehrke@sltrib.com