COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS - A five-acre parcel along Wasatch Boulevard that was to become a three-building office complex is now projected to be a county trailhead.
    City Councilman Bruce Jones, who represents that neighborhood, announced in a district meeting that the Salt Lake County Council voted earlier this week to move forward with a plan to preserve that area as open space.
    Bob and Rebecca Good applauded along with their neighbors to the news they hoped to hear.
    "The biggest relief is that for the 15 years that I have lived here we have had to battle high-density development over and over and over," said Rebecca Good. "Now we can sit back and enjoy our lives."
    The $8 million office complex had been proposed, opposed and debated at the county level, before Cottonwood Heights was a city. In 2004, the county conceded the landowners' request to rezone the land into a commercial area, and a year later when Cottonwood Heights became a city, it was bound to uphold that decision, said city officials.
    "Our hands were tied," said Mayor Kelvyn Cullimore, explaining that the city's options were to buy the land, place safety limitations on the development, or block the plan and face litigation.
    What Cottonwood Heights did was allow a building permit for the 42,000-square-foot project, but with 45 safety conditions.
    The office complex's
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would-be neighbors then made their effort to block the development, filing an appeal to the permit two months ago citing safety, geologic, traffic and lighting concerns.
    The city was making its own effort to prevent the development. In November, the mayor heard about the open space funds available to preserve land, and commissioned city staff to develop a proposal to save the land from development.
    Cullimore cautioned that final approval wasn't given yet and that the open space and parks and recreation funds were not secured, but that the county seemed very supportive of the project. The next step is to further develop the proposal and appraise the land, estimated at being worth $3 million. Cullimore said the project developers are willing to sell the land.
    "It's nice to feel like citizens can make a difference," said Chris Connelly, who lives above where the project would have been built. "And we're not just paving this paradise."
    mariav@sltrib.com