Woodbury Corporation and PEG Development are building the Palos Verdes Student Housing Project in Orem. Many Orem residents and those in the Utah Valley University community are excited for the new living options for students. Others are not.
As a developer, I have learned you can’t always please everyone, and I respect people’s right to choose to oppose development and growth once they are informed with both sides of the story.
On Feb. 13, the Orem City Council voted 5-2 to approve the project after more than a year of working on the project. In that time, the proposed project was studied, revamped, adjusted and revised with feedback from residents and the city. It is disheartening after all that work that some neighbors still fail to acknowledge all of the compromises, concessions and changes that have been made.
The site for the project is basically on-campus housing, surrounded by UVU on all sides. The only portion of the project that even touches the adjacent neighborhood is across the street from the Lakeridge Junior High ball fields. Adjacent and walkable student housing has the potential to remove thousands of cars from Orem’s streets during rush hour each day.
Orem’s traffic engineer said in a City Council meeting, “You get the students on-site, you make it walkable, you make it bikeable, you make it transit accessible, and the traffic numbers are going to stay low. I think student housing is the best thing to happen on [the] site.”
With all our projects, we welcome input from surrounding communities and residents, because engaged residents usually have really good ideas. The developers, along with Orem staff and City Council, worked exceptionally hard over the past 12 months to incorporate feedback from the neighbors surrounding the project. City Council members attended opposition and neighborhood meetings, as well as had countless one-on-one interactions with Orem residents in person and/or by email. City staff spent what had to be hundreds of hours reviewing, rejecting and re-reviewing proposed plans, site designs and building elevations we submitted in response to residents’ feedback. As a developer, I personally have never witnessed a more rigorous process from any city.
Here are just a few examples of the changes made to the project after listening to Orem residents:
Density and height were reduced. The current project has 400 fewer beds than the original proposal, which is a 25 percent reduction.
Surrounding neighbors asked that we provide parking to keep new resident cars off neighborhood streets. As a result, we increased on-site parking almost 50 percent over what we originally proposed. The project will now provide more parking per resident than any other project in Utah County!
We reduced or eliminated car traffic in the adjacent neighborhood by obtaining agreements from UVU to construct the main entrance of the project to the south across UVU grounds to University Parkway and I-15.
Those trying to stop this project need to be careful or they just may get what they are asking for. This land will never go back to single-family homes again. And if this project is stopped, then UVU will likely acquire the land and will have the freedom to build it wants on it and not have to answer to the city or community, and Orem will receive no property tax on it.
I welcome more people to become informed about the project and learn how much it will benefit UVU and Orem. You can do so by reaching out to your City Council-person, Orem city offices or UVU or visiting our website, PalosVerdesOrem.com.
Taylor Woodbury is COO of Woodbury Corporation.