A tug-of-war between growth and historic preservation intensifies in rural Utah city

Spring City • Two hours south of Salt Lake City, residents line up in front of a spigot just off the main drag.

Lugging water bottles, cooler jugs and paper cups, people get their share of Spring City’s famous spring water. The town was initially settled in 1852 by Latter-day Saint immigrants, who drank the same water residents line up for today.

But in this city — where a reverence for yesteryear meets the challenges of now, namely, housing affordability and growth — conflict is simmering between its leaders and the residents they represent.

Efforts from the City Council to reduce lot sizes have fueled a fight that has escalated to the point of property owners suing the panel of policymakers. Residents are concerned that the council’s plan will threaten Spring City’s status as a National Historic District — a designation that brings in millions in grant funding and tax credits to the town of barely 1,000 people.

“It’s very representative of an early Mormon village,” former Spring City Mayor and historic contractor Craig Paulsen said. “Lots of outbuilding structures from the pioneer days are still here. … Many of us still have large animals on our property where, if we go to half-acre, that’s going to change. I know it will, because one step leads to another, to another, to another.”

What led to the lawsuit?

The lawsuit, filed in Utah’s 6th District Court in July, came after a June 4 council proposal that would decrease minimum lot sizes from the traditional 1.06 acres to a half-acre.

The lot size exemplifies what’s called the “Mormon landscape,” a design featuring a 1.06-acre lot with room for a small home or cabin, a root cellar, outhouse, garden, fruit orchard and barns, among other outbuildings that were present on historic homesteads in Spring City, according to Friends of Historic Spring City, a nonprofit dedicated to preservation in the old pioneer town.

Many of those “Mormon landscape” elements still remain on Spring City properties today.

“Everybody in the [June 4] meeting was kind of stunned, and that’s what started the real outcry,” plaintiff and Spring City property owner Tony Rudman said. “And so we went to them, and they said, ‘We’re going to pass it; we have the right to pass it.’”

The following June 26 public hearing on the proposal lasted more than three hours. Some residents warned that changing the lot size to a half-acre would damage the town’s historical reputation and could threaten its historic district designation due to infill of nonhistoric homes.

Many also feared their homes could be devalued as a result of the change and that the city’s infrastructure could not support additional development that could come with more half-acre lots.

Others, like Spring City Council member Randy Strate, counter that the city should be able to address growth challenges and affordable housing in the area, Strate said during the June 26 hearing.

Some residents and council members also believe property owners should be able to determine what to do with their own land. Reducing lot sizes would give landowners the ability to divide their properties and sell portions, or allow them to give their children land on which to build their own homes, Mayor Chris Anderson said.

But residents who need to subdivide their lots already have a path to do so, Rudman said. The Spring City Board of Adjustments can allow for an exception to the minimum lot size if a property owner can demonstrate “undue hardship” beyond purely economic reasons.

While he sees the potential benefits that reducing lot sizes could bring, the mayor said he also understands concerns about preserving the city’s character.

“You look at Mount Pleasant or Moroni. They have just as many historic homes as we have, but you don’t get the same feel,” Anderson said, “because between the historic homes, there are all these new homes. So it’s just so much infill that you lose the feeling for it.”

Thirteen property owners in Spring City are listed as plaintiffs in the suit, with many being members of Friends of Historic Spring City. The nonprofit is also listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The suit alleges that the council did not go through the proper state processes or adhere to federal historic preservation requirements in its plan to subdivide historic lots, and requests that a judge reverse previous council land use actions and prohibit the body from reducing lot sizes.

Four of the five City Council members did not respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit. Council member Courtney Syme declined to comment due to the ongoing litigation.

“We do not believe that Spring City or any of its officials have engaged in any misconduct,” Taylor Kordsiemon, an attorney representing the Spring City Council members, said. “Their primary concern is, first and foremost, to protect and further the interests of Spring City citizens. We don’t think that the lawsuit has legal merit, and we look forward to defending against the plaintiffs’ allegations in court.”

Treasures of Spring City — and their incentives

Mayor Anderson’s granary door holds a glimpse into the town’s past. Anderson and his wife, Alison, saved the door when they refurbished their property, which belonged to former U.S. Rep. Jacob Johnson, who served as a judge for the Sanpete County area just before Utah became a state in 1896.

Etchings on the door from early Spring City residents show calculations of crops that were stored in the granary through the years, Anderson said. They’ve since converted the granary into a small guesthouse, but the structure is what gets the Andersons’ property on the National Register of Historic Places, Alison added.

About 58% of structures in Spring City contribute to the town’s designation as a National Historic District, according to documentation submitted to the National Park Service in 2022 by Friends of Historic Spring City.

National Historic Districts are evaluated by the park service and must contain a “significant concentration” of buildings, sites or objects “united historically or aesthetically by plan or physical development” to obtain the designation, according to the Utah Historical Society.

Structures like the Anderson’s granary and the adjacent barn are contributing factors to the designation, but major renovations or alterations to a structure would make it a “noncontributing” structure.

In recent years, the designation helped provide much-needed updates to an old building in town: the Spring City Old School, which now hosts city offices.

The Old School’s nearly $2 million renovation was partially funded by grants due to the town’s historic designation, along with fundraising efforts from Friends of Historic Spring City.

What used to be a dilapidated building that residents initially didn’t want to save because they feared it would be too costly, Alison Anderson explained, became a thriving community center, where the city stages concerts, a monthly potluck dinner for older residents, along with weddings and other events.

Thanks to the work of Friends of Historic Spring City — which Alison Anderson led at the time — not one tax dollar went toward the building’s restoration, Rudman, the lawsuit plaintiff, said.

The designation has also helped refurbish city infrastructure. In 2020, Spring City was awarded a $25 million grant to build a flood prevention reservoir in the northeast portion of the area — in part because Spring City is such a historic town, Chris Anderson said.

“The continuity of the four-house-per-block pattern of development is one of the most important contributing factors to the historic integrity of the Spring City Historic District…,” Utah State Historic Preservation Officer Christopher Merrit said in a letter cited by the property owners’ lawsuit. “Any changes to zoning to increase density could impact the National Register District.”

Where the city stands

Two referendums have already reversed attempts to reduce the 1.06-acre lot size, Mayor Anderson said, most recently in 2004. And a more recent survey conducted by the planning commission in 2023 also showed 76% of residents wanted to keep the city’s traditional 1.06-acre lots.

Anderson has urged a compromise between the council and residents, he said, since he doesn’t have a vote on the panel. The city worked on a revised ordinance since the June 26 public comment period, and on Sept. 4, the council issued its version of a middle-ground ordinance.

The amended ordinance, approved Tuesday by the council, includes a protected zone for portions of the city where the lot size would remain 1.06 acres, with a minimum lot size of a half-acre outside that protected zone.

That protected zone, however, wouldn’t extend to the National Historic District boundaries approved by the National Park Service, the mayor said.

The ordinance’s unanimous approval came after Anderson pushed for more time to craft a different compromise, and the city’s planning and zoning commission voted against embracing the council’s plan. Because all council members voted for it, Anderson said, residents won’t be able to pursue a referendum.

Rudman said Friends of Spring City appreciates the city’s compromise but would’ve preferred the entire district be protected from lot size changes.

“There’s still a large majority, I believe, that wanted the entire district protected against half-acre lots,” Rudman said.

The lawsuit will still move forward, he said, and the November municipal elections could change the council makeup.

Three council seats — including Strate’s — are up for election. And with a new council, the mayor said, the new ordinance could be reversed or changed as soon as January.