Joan Liquin has called Hollow Road home for more than 20 years. It’s where she raised her children and where the quiet, secluded surroundings give her a sense of peace.
“It’s this very rural feel, but also it’s a unique area in the valley,” Liquin said, “and a lot of people know it just because it’s a beautiful road.”
Near her home sits 28 unincorporated acres in northern Utah’s Cache County that Liquin said has been maintained as farmland for decades.
She walks past it most evenings, often spotting deer, elk and other wildlife. To her, the property acts as a natural buffer between her home and the nearest city, Nibley.
“It just breaks my heart to think of losing that buffer area,” she said, “that kind of helps us to feel out of town and away from busyness.”
Rachel and Trevor Hansen, the owners of the property at 5325 S. Hollow Road, are seeking to annex the land into Nibley, according to city records, before they move forward with plans to build low-density housing.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
Taxes, safety top neighbors’ concerns
Some Hollow Road residents don’t want the plans to move forward. Several told The Salt Lake Tribune that petitions have been circulating, with neighbors collecting signatures to ensure the city hears their concerns before deciding.
One such petition raises worries about a potential increase in property taxes if more homes are built, as well as safety concerns stemming from the road’s narrow design and lack of sidewalks or bike paths.
“A lot of us are afraid it’s, frankly, going to drive us out when we have those increases,” Liquin said. “Some of us have fairly modest homes or limited incomes. There’s widows, there’s single moms and retirees.”
Neighbors also say a resident was killed in a hit-and-run on the road years ago and worry that additional development would bring more traffic to the street.
Road improvements — and how they would be handled if the annexation petition is approved — are top of mind for Rich Sharp, whose Hollow Road home sits within Nibley’s borders, because he fears the city and its residents would shoulder the cost of any upgrades.
“I don’t think there was a whole lot of consideration with the potential cost of that,” Sharp said, adding that he believes the expense could be “extravagant.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rich Sharp, a Hollow Road resident, points to the unincorporated property proposed for annexation into Nibley on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026.
The original annexation petition included only half of Hollow Road — the side bordering the property — but Nibley City Planner Levi Roberts said Cache County has since requested that the plans be revised to include both sides of the road, placing it entirely under Nibley’s control.
Nibley Mayor Larry Jacobsen said the developer would be responsible for road upgrades, such as adding sidewalks, but acknowledged that the city would assume responsibility for maintaining the street going forward.
Jacobsen said a recent notice about the option to protest the annexation caused some confusion, with some residents thinking they could file a petition to formally oppose it.
Under Utah law, however, only city councils or other affected governmental boards, owners of rural property within the proposed annexation, or owners of land in a mining protection area can formally protest.
“My neighbors aren’t wasting their time with the petition,” the mayor said, “because what they have on the petition informs the City Council.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Cache County property shown could be annexed into Nibley for future low-density housing development.
What happens next?
When the annexation request landed before the City Council in November, council members agreed to keep the conversation going. The council accepted it for further review, a procedural step that leaves the final decision for another day.
“They accepted it, but not as a final approval,” Roberts said, “but just as a, ‘hey, we’ll look into this further.’”
Roberts said the planning commission has recommended a zoning designation that would allow low-density housing on the property — roughly 12 to 14 homes, at one house per 2 acres — though the council would make the final call when it votes on the request.
Before that can happen, Roberts said, the petition has to go before the Cache County Council. That’s because state law requires county input whenever an annexation proposal would create an unincorporated peninsula — or a pocket of land that would be virtually surrounded by the city but remain under county control.
County Clerk Bryson Behm said the county had not yet received the annexation petition from Nibley as of Tuesday, one of the first steps before the County Council can put the decision to a vote.
A landscape residents want to keep
The property is currently zoned for agriculture, which has kept the land open for uses like farming — a feature neighbors like Shaun Oborn say they’ve valued.
Oborn recalled a moment a few years ago when a passing cyclist stopped one of his neighbors and said, ‘I don’t think that you people that live on Hollow Road realize what an incredible place this is.’"
Along the property’s edge, the Blacksmith Fork River, a scenic stream known for its trout fishing, attracts a variety of wildlife, Oborn said, including deer, moose, elk, owls and even the occasional bald eagle.
“Just by the river, in that area, we see deer in that field all the time, where the proposed housing is going in,” Oborn said. “It’s kind of a unique area.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) A creek flows along Hollow Road in Nibley.
He fears developing the land would result in the loss of that wildlife.
Jacobsen said the city has tried to protect plots of agricultural land, like the one up for debate, through a 2023 ordinance that lets landowners sell their building rights on certain properties, preserving that acreage as farmland or open space, while allowing development to happen elsewhere in the city.
The mayor, who also lives on Hollow Road, said he wants to maintain the road’s rural character, but he also has to consider what could happen if the developer turns to neighboring Hyrum and seeks annexation there.
“I’d rather Nibley be making this decision than somebody else making this decision,” he said. “I’m not saying anything bad about what one city council in another town might do relative to what the Nibley City Council does, but Nibley residents have more to say about what goes on in Nibley than they have to say about what goes on next to Nibley.”
While Oborn understands the desire to develop as the region grows, he hopes that some stretches of Hollow Road can remain untouched, offering the same wide-open skies, farmland and quiet beauty that first persuaded him to make this place home.
Liquin said she hopes the feeling of living close to nature doesn’t disappear.
“We just want to maintain that rural feel and that feeling of kind of being out in nature, as opposed to developed areas,” Liquin said. “You can’t go back once it changes.”