(LAYTON -- A planned 140-acre development is causing some concerns among its soon-to-be neighbors.
Tonight, the city's planning commission will vote on an ordinance amendment that would rezone a portion of the area, along West Hill Field Road from 2200 West to 2700 West, from agriculture to a newly formed village center code. That meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the city's council chambers. Planning commission members will review the agenda items during a work meeting at 6 p.m.
Tonight's vote deals with the 107-acre area on the south side of West Hill Field Road. That development has caught the attention of several nearby home owners.
"My neighbors and I have been talking, and we have a feeling that there is not a lot of information out there about this," said Kristine Dennis, who lives near the area proposed for the new development.
The planned West Layton Village will be an area with businesses, single-family homes and condo/townhouses.
Dennis said there is such a broad range as to how much of the development will be used for two- and three-story apartments that the residents cannot fully understand what the potential development will look like.
"It could be the largest collection of apartments in the city, someone has been saying," Dennis said. "It's just hard to figure out what's going on."
Peter Matson, Layton's long-range planner, said city staff has prepared handouts for the planning commission that will explain what percentage of the development will be available for multifamily housing units.
Matson said there are reasons the city has to provide a range and cannot ask for a specific percentage.
"The main reason is there needs to be a little bit of market flexibility," Matson said. "This thing doesn't just happen because we want it to. It has to work financially for a developer, or why do it?"
Matson said the city will still play a big role in deciding how much of the development is multifamily housing.
"It's up to the developer to follow guidelines of code and develop a plan, and that plan comes through a public process," Matson said. "The code is very prescriptive and very predictable, for the developer to know what they are getting into."
The village center code is the result of city staff working with PlaceMakers, a consulting firm specializing in planning communities and creating form-based codes to help those communities become a reality.
"The city invested in the guidance of a consultant team to make sure we get it right based on their experience," Matson said. "We don't have direct experience with form-based code, except for what we've learned firsthand."
The city has tried to resolve concerns and spread information to residents through the website westlaytonvillage.org.
The city also held open houses in the past to receive public input.
"We hardly got anybody to an open house in December when the consultants were here," Matson said. "We wish we would have had more of this discussion then, but it didn't happen. So we're trying to handle it in the hearing process as best we can."
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