Ogden leaders mull controversial plans to add 43 more townhomes to Bingham Fort area
OGDEN — The battle over the future of the old Bingham Fort area is again simmering to the forefront.
The Ogden City Council on Tuesday is to consider a pair of measures that, if approved, would allow 43 additional town homes to be built just west of a cluster of 30 townhomes now taking shape on the northwest corner of the Second Street and Wall Avenue intersection. Tuesday’s meeting starts at 6 p.m.
As developer Shawn Strong sees it, the new proposal, plus the ongoing development, is breathing life into the area. The area where the 30 townhomes are going in had long sat empty before the work started. The 43 additional townhomes would be built on largely undeveloped land tucked to the west of that, incorporating an existing historic home now sitting on the land, the 44th unit in the new development.
“In my opinion, it’s a blighted area,” said Strong, developing the site through his Clearfield-based development company, Parkridge Inc. “I’m trying to help the area and I think they could be grateful someone’s willing to come in and do it.”
The town homes are to be sold, not rented, he noted, and they are quality units, incorporating brick into their facades. Around half of the 30 units now under construction already have buyers, underscoring the demand and need, he says, for additional housing.

Image supplied, city of Ogden
A map showing the area, in green and brown, where an additional 43 townhomes would be built per a proposal Ogden City Council officials are to debate on Tuesday, Aug. 17, 2021. An existing home would be incorporated into the development, the 44th unit. The planned site is west of an area where 30 townhomes are already taking shape off the northwest corner of Second Street and Wall Avenue.
Nevertheless, members of a vocal contingent who have pushed to protect some of the historic attributes of the area aren’t happy, worried the plans will alter the character of the zone. Town homes “would not be in harmony” with the neighborhood, reads a letter Mike and Anna Keogh, a couple who live in the area, sent to the City Council.
Instead, they propose development of single-family homes. “Ogden is overdeveloped with apartments and condos. There is a shortage of detached, single-family homes,” says the letter.
Keogh elaborated in an interview with the Standard-Examiner. The plans would “change the geography, the history of the neighborhood, with a negative impact on the historic restoration we’re doing right now,” she said.
More specifically, the critics argue that the change sought by Strong runs afoul of recommendations from city planning staffers since it would isolate a pair of properties. Strong seeks the rezone of 3.8 acres from a classification allowing for single-family homes to another that allows for denser development, the proposed townhomes.
Kristen Visser, meantime, a real estate agent who has aided the foes of the townhome plans, says allowing the new townhomes could lead to yet more, chipping away at the historic attributes of the area. Visser is active in the Weber County Heritage Foundation and that involvement factored in her involvement in the Second Street issue.
“Once (development) starts, it will keep going,” she said. “No one moves into a townhome thinking, ‘I wonder what the history is of this place.'”

By TIM VANDENACK, Standard-Examiner
Tammy Creeger, right, demonstrates an irrigation system dating to the mid-1800s in the backyard of her home off West Second Street in Ogden. Kristen Visser, left, and Anna Keogh look on. The three have raised objections to plans to build a cluster of new townhomes west of 30 townhomes now taking shape on the northwest corner of Second Street and Wall Avenue. The worry the new development would harm the historic character of the neighborhood.
The Bingham Fort area encompasses the sector along West Second Street west of Wall Avenue. It was one of the first areas around Ogden settled by the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who came to the region starting in the mid-1800s and Anna Keogh, along with Tammy Creeger, have pushed to preserve some of the homes that date to the era. Both of their homes, located on West Second Street, are on the Ogden City Register of Historic Resources.
Other homes also date to the Pioneer era and Keogh and Creeger have pushed to preserve them, get them listed on the register as well. Creeger aired concerns dating back to at least 2019 about Strong’s plans, ultimately approved, to let the 30 townhomes be built, worried even back then about the potential upshot to the character of the neighborhood.
Strong says he has done what he can to accommodate critics like Keogh and Creeger. He’s scaled back his proposal, he noted, and others in the neighborhood favor his efforts. “It just comes down to, they don’t want townhomes,” he said.
The older homes Keogh and Creeger single out for protection probably wouldn’t be eligible for listing on the city’s historic registry given their condition, he maintains. One of structures on the additional expanse of property he wants to develop, he said, is vacant and deteriorating, home to transients and raccoons.
Beyond that, redevelopment of some of the structures singled out by Keogh and Creeger would potentially be cost-prohibitive. “It would cost hundreds and hundreds of thousands to preserve those homes,” he said.
Strong expects the 30 townhomes now taking shape on the corner of Second Street and Wall Avenue should be completed by the end of 2021.
The area was the focus of controversy over the proposal to give part of Second Street an honorary designation. Ultimately, the Ogden City Council last month approved a measure giving part of Second Street the honorary name of Chief Little Soldier Way. Chief Little Soldier was a chief in the Northwestern band of the Shoshone Nation who lived in the area in the mid-1800s.