Pub. 1 2020-2021 Issue 1

20 REFLEXION | 2020 | AIA Utah BY STEVEN CORNELL, ARCHITECT, DIVISION OF STATE HISTORY, STATE OF UTAH Urban Revitalization in Utah’s “Rural” Downtowns Main Street, Lehi, Utah. 1943. Looking East. 24527; Salt Lake Tribune No. 4131. Courtesy Utah State Historical Society. L et’s look at Lehi. I happen to reside here, so I’m looking closely, perhaps a little too closely. Lehi was an outlying farming community, and a small downtown grew out of that, mostly of one-story brick structures. The economy was good with a sugar-beet factory and a roller mill. Lehi stayed small for most of its life. It was a bit of a hick town and was the perfect urban actor for Footloose, a town behind the times and a tad bit prudish. That’s all changed now. Lehi, with its overabundance of farmland, is now home turf to Utah’s booming tech industry with heavy hitters like Adobe, I.M. Flash, Vivint and others. With that new-found industry and all that empty farmland, Lehi has undergone a population boom that is rarely matched in the State. The population was 47,407 at the 2010 census, up from 19,028 in 2000. A more recent 2017 estimate reports a population of 62,712. According to the U.S. Census bureau, Lehi was the 11th fastest-growing large city in the nation between 2015 and 2016, according to a U.S. Census bureau figures released in 2017. Future projections by the Governor’s Office of Management and Budget indicate a continuing trend with Lehi looking at 82,589 residents by 2030. Regional population trends are similarly upward. To the west, both Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain City, both of which have a considerable association with Lehi, the numbers are even more pronounced. Currently, those areas have a population of about 30,000 residents each, give or take, and the projections for 2030 show an aggressively increasing trend, with Saratoga Springs at around 58,000 and Eagle Mountain at 54,000. The other adjacent communities, Highland and American Fork, show 2030 population estimates of 21,000 and 40,000, respectively, a more moderate pace to be sure. All of these variables factor into Lehi’s future, and the regional population of these five communities will reach a near staggering 255,000 residents by 2030. That means there is enormous pressure on Lehi’s antiquated Main Street, which is a sliver’s width compared to the more robust examples abounding in Salt Lake. There was so much vehicular pressure on Lehi’s Main Street due to growth in Saratoga Springs that there was serious consideration by the city to pick up the buildings on the north side of the street and shift them, widening the street to accommodate increased traffic flows. The City began buying up properties in 2008 to plan for such a contingency. The Mayor at the time was open to the possibility that Main Street become an expressway to accommodate increased traffic loads. That proposal was short- lived when UDOT ended up building Pioneer Crossing, but that alternative did not immunize Lehi’s Main Street from the impacts. Even still, Main Street traffic was reduced from 30,000 cars a day to 18,000. In 2009, the old Cotter’s Grocery