OGDEN — The future course of Ogden City is being set in the present.

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski made it clear that planning for the city’s future doesn’t just happen overnight.

“Planning is not an instantaneous thing,” he said. “It’s something that requires a lot of community input. It’s a profession of its own that requires a lot of expertise.”

However, he said the city has been long out of date on one of the most important pieces of city planning.

“We’ve been far behind for quite a while in our general plan,” he said. “That’s why, when I started, we initiated the new general plan update.”

After last seeing an update in 2002, the city began a major push to adopt a new 25-year general plan in 2024 and has continued the process into this year.

Ogden City Planning Manager Barton Brierley said the plan has received a lot of feedback throughout the process.

“We’ve had people come out of the woodwork — all facets of the community coming — providing such great input,” he said. “In our feedback, people have been so incredibly positive about Ogden, I’ve just been blown away at every meeting.”

He added that a process like this needs patience.

“Sometimes people get frustrated because they’ll say something today and they don’t see it implemented on the ground tomorrow,” he said. “It’s a process. Ten years from now, you’ll think, ‘Well we ought to do that.’ Why? Because somebody showed up and expressed that idea at a meeting and expressed that idea, so we’re doing it now. It takes time, so people don’t always get instant feedback. Our decision-makers are listening. Our planning commission, our City Council, our mayor are all listening and it all makes a difference.”

Brierley said the formation of the general plan update has gone through several phases since officials and community members began working on it over a year ago.

“We did the visioning process with a really big focus on that last year into the beginning of this year,” he said. “We had our vision celebration in January. We have the basic vision on that for the future. Since that time, we’ve been working on all of the chapters dealing with the economy, housing, natural resources, safety, natural hazards. We’ve had a lot of of focus groups talking to a ton of individuals — business owners, community leaders, our resource providers — so we’re getting to where we have a basic outline of our goals and policies.”

He said that plans are to hold a community event on Nov. 20 at Ogden Union Station to show where the process is at and gather additional feedback.

Brierley said the finalized general plan document will likely go before the City Council for adoption in the early part of 2026.

“This November event’s going to be our last big public event that we have for it,” he said. “We expect the Planning Commission to start having hearings on it in the winter and then it will go to the council.”

Nadolski said there’s a good reason for the general plan to take two years to formulate.

“We knew it would take a long time, in large part, because we want so much input,” he said. “The directive I gave to Barton was, ‘I want to make sure that people and communities and constituents that are using this find it user-friendly.’ We’re trying to create policies, ordinances and processes at the city that are user-friendly. These are not just for us, they’re for the people, the community and the city.”