Developing inviting, sustainable neighborhood districts near the stations should be easy - but it isn't, a panel of developers told city officials and community leaders in Utah for the 11th annual Rail-Volution conference in Salt Lake City through Saturday.

"Suddenly, the market is here," said Gloria Ohland of the Oakland, Calif.-based Reconnecting America, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to transit-oriented development. "But it's so slow. It's like water torture."

Developers from around the nation talked frankly about bureaucratic obstacles that hinder building housing close to transit, a notion Southern California developer Larry Bond called a utopian tool for long-term community development.

But a lack of integration between developers, municipalities and transit agencies is stalling the promise of transit-oriented development. Problems with city officials can be as broad as overplanning or as basic as not having a clear understanding of real estate transactions and risk.

"Sometimes developers are seen as a roadblock," said Gerry Tully, whose Proterra Companies has specialized in reclaiming contaminated, abandoned or underused industrial properties. "Cities don't build themselves. There need to be developers at the table," he said.

Added Katherine Aguilar Perez, a transportation planner with Forest City Enterprises in Los Angeles, "One-size-fits-all suburban detached [housing] can't be sustained. And it's not what people want," she said.

Reconnecting America estimates 14.6 million households could be looking to locate in new housing within a half-mile of transit stations. Most of the demand is in the five metropolitan regions with mature and extensive transit stations - New York, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and Philadelphia - and Los Angeles.

Salt Lake, Denver and Seattle have small transit systems but high population growth rates, which make them prime candidates for transit-oriented development, the group's studies have found.

Demographics are key, Ohland said in an interview. Married couples with kids no longer are the majority, and single adults are not attracted to single-family suburban homes.

"Suddenly, changing demographics and the market are doing what social engineering did not succeed at doing," she said. In the Salt Lake City region, "meeting that demand would mean building another 850 units of housing at every one of your existing and 12 planned rail stations."

That's what is happening in Ogden, said Bill Wright of the Ogden City Corporation, who displayed the city's ambitious redevelopment plan to potential developers.

At the center of Ogden's transit-oriented development hopes is a riverfront high-density housing development near a recently opened transit hub that will be a commuter rail station. "The idea is to move people through the long corridor from Salt Lake, then on transit - and foot-east into the city," he said.

The developers on the panel agreed that transit stations should be used to create a distinct sense of place. A transit station "isn't a platform, it isn't a building next to a platform, it's a district," said Marilee Utter, president of Denver-based Citiventure Associates and a specialist for the city's rapid transit district.

Jon Pertchik of the Staubach Company South Florida said transit-oriented development allows developers to make profits while also doing good. "There's a social responsibility aspect to this," he said.