Last week, Ogden City announced in a press release that 1.91 acres of the former Taylor Canyon Elementary School property will be held as permanent public open space.

“The Ogden City Council approved funding Tuesday that allows the City to move forward with acquiring the property through the Future Park Property Reserve, a fund established specifically to preserve open space and expand parks throughout Ogden,” the release said. “Once home to Taylor Canyon Elementary School, the site has served as a neighborhood gathering space since the school closed in 2022. As the future of the property remained uncertain, residents consistently expressed a desire to see the land preserved for a neighborhood park.”

Ogden City Mayor Ben Nadolski told the Standard-Examiner that this purchase helps the city tackle a growing problem.

“I immediately wanted to express the interest because we’re not building open space anymore, and so we want to be really thoughtful about what we do with those opportunities and how they apply towards strengthening a neighborhood,” he said. “We certainly find ourselves in a housing crisis, but we also find ourselves in a health crisis, in a mental health crisis, in a crisis where people need access to the outdoors and access to healthy lifestyles. This project and the plans was a long journey of making sure that we could exercise our ability to purchase some land for open space, but also making sure that we’re working in collaboration and partnership with the school district to make sure and help them achieve their goals as well.”

The release notes that the preservation effort is about a year old.

“The opportunity to preserve the property began in 2025 when the Ogden School District declared the former Taylor Canyon Elementary site surplus,” the release said. “Under Utah law, the declaration gave Ogden City the first opportunity to purchase the land before it could be offered on the open market, allowing the City to preserve the site as permanent public open space.”

The release adds that the city has not taken over all of the former school property.

“The City’s purchase preserves approximately 1.91 acres as neighborhood open space while ensuring the property continues serving the community in a way residents envisioned during years of discussion about its future,” the release said. “Ogden School District will retain ownership of the remaining space, where single-family homes are planned to compliment the open space and neighborhood aesthetic, approximately 2.6 acres.”

Nadolski said that the park area could see some upgrades in the future, but it what form those take aren’t for the city to decide.

“I do think that there’s some things that we can do to help make it better with amenities and stuff that are more park-like,” he said. “But what that looks like, well, that’s not just up to me. That’s also up to the neighborhood and up to the City Council. And so we’ll start the process of figuring out what that looks like and when that takes place now that we have control of the land.”

He said that it could be a little bit of time before any major changes come to the land.

“This year I had proposed in my proposed budget to the City Council that we purchase the property,” he said. “They wanted to see some changes to what I proposed and to get the price tag down and to purchase a little bit less ground than what I had proposed, so all of that played out through that budget cycle. And so I look forward to the next budget cycle and see what we can build into the next budget cycle for improvements. In the meantime, we won’t just work with the budget, we’ll also work with the neighborhood and the community to see what they want to see at that park in the future, and then we’ll see how much that costs and we’ll see how we can budget that into future investments.”

Nadolski said he hopes to extend this commitment to neighborhood improvement to other parts of the city as well.

“That’s the same approach and the same mindset that I’ll continue to take to other neighborhoods, if not all neighborhoods in our city — to make sure that there’s similar access to open space,” he said. “And we know that there’s some deficits on the north end of town, and so we’ve got our eyes on the north end, too, to look for opportunities for expansion of recreation space and open space.”