More gondola chewables

I

t is most often the case that the wheels of government turn slowly. This is the price society pays to check the process along the way, making sure laws and regulations are being followed, making sure everything's on the up-and-up.

So goes the agonizingly slow activities related to Ogden's proposed urban gondola and a private developer's plan to build million-dollar homes on a reconfigured Mount Ogden Golf Course, a mountain-side gondola and a four-season resort in Malan's Basin. I's have to be dotted and t's must be crossed.

But it sometimes seems that the more information is revealed about the projects, the less conclusive anyone can be about what will happen, or when.

In May the city, at the request of the Standard-Examiner's newsroom, released a 16-page draft of a gondola/resort study it had commissioned a year ago. (Read it online at www.standard.net/ASP/GondolaStudy.pdf.) It provides little new information about the project's funding; for example, the gondola-resort plan, overall, has always been billed as a $500 million project, and the draft puts the price tag at $533 million.

But it does define some of the particulars that haven't been widely available -- estimated costs of specific segments of the project. This is where the draft, even though it's a year old, may be of some good use: If the city's estimates are reliable, that will bolster public support. If they are inaccurate, however, public support could shrink.

For example, the city has been estimating the cost will be $20 million to construct an urban gondola from Wall Avenue up 23rd Street and then south on Harrison Boulevard to somewhere near Weber State University. It estimates about 406,000 riders annually, at fares between $1.50 and $2 per ride. (Estimates for the mountainside gondola's ridership and fares are separate, which will help Ogdenites judge the urban gondola's estimates more clearly.)

The city is hoping to convince the Utah Transit Authority to spend $200,000 to specifically study the urban gondola's usefulness as a transit tool. That would certainly be helpful, both to settle the question of costs -- $20 million sounds low to us, given recent spikes in the price tag for all types of construction jobs -- and ridership.

The draft also includes the project's estimated tax revenue for various entities in Ogden and Weber County over a 10-year period: $89.6 million. That's not the sum total of the impact, of course. There would be lots of jobs created during the construction phase -- 80 percent of the $533 million would be spent on materials and construction costs, including labor.

In addition, the city foresees a $33 million, 200-room hotel built downtown along the gondola route, with 50,000 square feet of retail and a restaurant. It does not say what effect, if any, this hotel would have on others already operating in Ogden.

As the city's administration readily admits, this is not a "feasibility" study. It relies exclusively on city-provided data, and not surprisingly, paints a rosy picture. It may turn out to be accurate, but at this point it must be viewed with skepticism because it isn't an objective analysis.

Additionally, the draft ignores the estimated value of the Mount Ogden Golf Course's 125 acres, which the city proposes to sell to private developer Chris Peterson. The value of that land has always been absent in the debate over this issue, and will have to be made public before Ogden residents can decide whether to support the larger proposal.

And so the process continues ...

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