‘Family City USA’: This nearly full Utah town is done with density and wants more single-family homes

Orem • For decades, Orem’s motto has been “Family City USA.”

Yet in fast-growing and already family-oriented Utah County, how does Orem set itself apart?

It’s all about framing, according to Mayor David Young.

Before Young took office in 2022, he campaigned on stopping the development of thousands of rental units planned for the city. He also wanted to make that unofficial moniker official.

Now, it applies to everything the city plans. He wants employees to ask themselves: Does this take us closer to being Family City USA? Or does this take us farther away?

Whether you’re a young couple with no kids, a single parent, or you live in a multigenerational household, he said, it’s “about supporting the people who love and rely on each other, however that family is structured.”

To Orem, that means providing “stability, belonging and opportunity.”

Here’s what the city is doing to live up to its motto.

What’s ‘Family City USA’ really like?

About 11 years ago, Katie Seastrand and her husband decided to move to Orem from Idaho. Her husband, a journeyman plumber, had gotten a job at the nearby Utah State Hospital. With two kids already — and another about a month from his due date — she said they were both looking forward to his more stable job with benefits.

Now, that baby is 11, and her two older children are 15 and 17.

Seastrand recounted her family’s story in the shade of a food vendor on a recent evening at the city’s annual OremFest. She was there with her mom and aunt, plus young nieces and nephew, who sat on a park bench nearby, blowing into plastic trumpets. Her daughter was somewhere at the festival, wandering with a friend, Seastrand said.

The city is a good place to raise a family, she said, and it’s easy to meet others who are doing the same.

“But definitely over the last 11 years,” she said, “it has gotten more crowded than ever.”

She said it takes longer to travel to places in town. Rents have gone up, too, alongside home prices. Even though she said she and her husband would like to buy, they don’t feel like they can afford to here.

For years, she said her family has been renting from a family member, and they feel grateful for that stability. But it’s bittersweet.

“We kind of feel trapped where we are,” Seastrand said, “because we don’t want to go anywhere that’s more expensive.”

There are at least 30,612 households in Orem — 61% of which are headed by a married couple like the Seastrand’s, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

That’s less than Utah County’s total, at 69%. The data also shows Orem has more households led by single mothers (9%) than the rest of the county, generally, and that the city also has a significant number of “nonfamily” households at 26%, perhaps driven by enrollment at Utah Valley University.

Making families’ lives easier

Many cities have “wonderful libraries” and “incredible” parks, said Bryce Merrill, the city’s library and recreation director.

So when he got the City Council directive to keep families top of mind when making decisions, Merrill said his team decided to focus on “friction points.”

Instead of signing up for two straight weeks of swim lessons, for instance, swim lessons are now continuously available on certain days a week, during various time slots, via a subscription model, Merrill said. A parent chooses the day and time that works for them and can lock down that time slot until they cancel.

He said the city also changed how it builds and schedules its youth sports league, to allow families who live near each other, or who go to the same schools, to play on the same teams.

“Competitive equity is awesome for recreation sports, but at the end of the day, if we give more weight to being able to sign up with people that make carpooling easier, or being able to have a schedule that is responsive to school breaks and all of that,” Merrill said, it’s “less friction for the family” — and may end up prompting more to participate.

He said he’s particularly proud of the recently remodeled Hillcrest Park Center, an old Alpine School District building revitalized with federal American Rescue Plan monies and local tax dollars.

The center is the keystone of its namesake Hillcrest Park, which boasts pickleball and basketball courts and a “million-dollar playground.”

Merrill said the center, which residents can use for free, was built so that the thousands who live nearby could walk or bike there, instead of crossing the vehicle-clogged University Parkway and State Street.

Here, lockers are also available for patrons to receive their borrowed books or other materials, instead of needing to stop at the library.

The center also has a game room adjacent to the gym.

“It’s got a big opening you can see right in. That’s a lot more fun for families that are on the sidelines of a sports game,” Merrill said.

There’s concessions too, and given the 17-hours-a-day someone is working them, he said, the city was able to provide “really cool outdoor patio furniture,” since there’s less worry it will be stolen or vandalized. Think Adirondack chairs instead of picnic tables chained to the ground.

At the library, Merrill said, staff began to focus on the “experiential” instead of the traditional, increasing their offerings for events where parents and kids can learn a skill together.

They’ve also invested in their Parent Education Resource Center, which offers education materials, like books and games or puzzles. It once operated downstairs on special hours, but Merrill said they moved it upstairs and increased its hours.

While most patrons continue to check out digital materials, like e-books, he said many also borrow their filmmaking tools, like GoPro cameras, and telescopes.

The result is 30% more foot traffic than two years ago, with an increase in both short and long trips — making library errands more convenient to run, but also enticing those free to linger to stay for longer.

Is there enough room?

While Orem seems to be a good place for families, many who want to live in a traditional single-family home are finding themselves pushed out of the city.

Lindsey Laudie and her family had once lived in an established Orem neighborhood, with mature trees and “great old houses,” for about five years.

“It was perfect for our family for a while,” she said of the home, “but we kind of outgrew it with more kids.”

They would have loved to find a larger place in Orem, she said, but they couldn’t find anything affordable that met their needs.

“Orem out-priced us because it’s so central and so convenient of a place, and we get that and we would love to stay,” Laudie said, “but we got a little bit more house for the dollar by moving to Pleasant Grove.”

She said her family — her husband, plus their four kids, who range in age from 7 to 18 — still finds themselves in Orem a few times a week, including June 5, when she and her youngest decorated figurines beneath a park pavilion retrofitted for craft time during OremFest.

Further down the table, Kassidy Hughes sat with her three children, also decorating. Like Laudie, Hughes and her family had lived in Orem for five years, but they’ve also since moved elsewhere because they wanted a bigger home but couldn’t afford it.

For her family, the right choice was Highland.

“We just decided to take a leap. I’m such a homebody that I feel like we moved out of state living in Highland,” she said.

While she said she misses their old “picture-perfect” Orem neighborhood, with its tall, leafy trees, kids playing in yards and walkable parks, they like their new neighborhood, too.

Still, OremFest remains a tradition for Hughes because “it’s just super family-oriented.” There’s free admission and activities, like face painting. She said they also like the parade.

Experts say building more dense homes — like apartments or condos, or confining single-family homes to smaller lot sizes — is a way to tackle the state’s lack of housing and increase affordability. But Orem officials say the city is dense enough.

They are looking to squeeze in more single-family homes into what’s left of the city’s nearly full (about 95% built-out) footprint.

“The current mayor and council, they feel like we’ve kind of done our part for high-density housing and giving people options that need those options,” spokesperson Pete Wolfley said.

The majority of the city’s renters — about 4,670 households — live in larger apartment complexes, with 10 or more units. Another 2,215 households live in buildings with just three or four units.

The percentage of renters in buildings with 10 or more units is generally higher than the county, also outpacing Lehi and Saratoga Springs.

But just 16% of renter households in Orem — 2,046 — live in a single-family detached home, compared to the nearly 80%, or 14,020, who own, according to the census data.

City code does allow accessory dwelling units (an apartment built in or next to an existing home), but owners must also live on the property. As of June 2023, the city had just over 750 of those, up from 30 in 2022.

During a City Council meeting this spring, members mulled an ordinance that would rezone the Timpanogos Research and Development Park, allowing its 23.3 acres to transform into a single-family housing development, built by Tri Point Homes.

Jared Hall, planning manager, told council members that more than 75 homes could fit into the site.

“Whenever we have a development like this, it’s going to raise a lot of questions and eyebrows,” Young said.

But ultimately, it’s a design grounded in the tenets of “Family City USA,” he said.

“In previous meetings,” he said, “we had a lot of unhappy residents that didn’t like the density and didn’t like the plan. And tonight, we don’t have anyone speaking out against us. So to me, that tells us what our residents want.”

The motion passed unanimously.

— Tribune data reporter Megan Banta contributed to this report.

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