Ogden City Council gets split recommendations for latest honorary street proposal
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- Signs marking a designated section of 24th Street in downtown Ogden named Martin Luther King Jr Street are pictured Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2018.
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- Brad Timothy is working on getting Ogden’s A and B streets just west of Fort Buenaventura honor-named for Miles Goodyear and his wife, Pomona.
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- Included in the renewal/restoration of Fort Buenaventura in Ogden is a “new” primitive camp dedicated by the Fort Buenaventura Mountain Men to Miles Goodyear, founder of the Fort in 1845-46.
OGDEN — Honorary street names are once again a topic of discussion among city officials, but fuzzy guidelines and conflicting recommendations are leaving some feeling lost about how to proceed.
Ogden City Planning Manager Barton Brierley brought a request for two honorary street names before the City Council on Tuesday.
Brad Timothy, member of a mountain man group active in historic recreations and other activities at Fort Buenaventura, petitioned the city to have American fur trader Miles Goodyear and his Ute tribe wife, Pomona, commemorated with honorary street names.
With Goodyear having built and occupied Fort Buenaventura off of west 24th Street, Timothy said he felt it fitting to remember the pair by naming A Avenue “Miles Goodyear Avenue” and B Avenue “Pomona Avenue.”
Cluttered signage is an area of concern for Brierley, who said having two intersecting streets with honorary names, which would be stacked up and displayed alongside official street names, would simply be too much.
The Ogden Planning Commission, although recommending approval of the honorary street names, has requested that signage not be placed where A Avenue and 24th Street intersect in light of the honorary designation to Martin Luther King Jr. already present on 24th Street.
When considering recent street naming proposals, the planning commission has said that the honorary name must serve a public purpose.
Policies regarding honorary street names reportedly cause much confusion among commission members, who are once again asking that guidelines be updated.
According to Brierley, the commission struggles every time they receive a request, pointing specifically to their last request looking to honor Satnam Singh, was shot and killed on Feb. 28, 2021, inside Super Grocery, the store he owned and operated at 675 N. Monroe Blvd.
Jesse Redden, an Ogden resident and regular at Singh’s store, petitioned the city to have an honorary designation of Satnam Singh Drive attached to 675 North in the area.
After one year of back-and-forth discussion with the city over his request, the City Council denied Redden’s petition with one opposing vote, former Chair Bart Blair.
But whereas in Singh’s case, planning commissioners among other city officials questioned whether an honorary designation for him met the criteria for serving a public purpose, a requirement under the city’s honorary street name ordinance that still remains under revision, the same concern isn’t present about Goodyear.
Goodyear is considered the first settler in Utah of European descent. Long before Brigham Young, Goodyear settled in Ogden and began building Fort Buenaventura sometime in September 1846.
Although Timothy and the Planning Commission approve of Goodyear’s historical significance to the area, the Ogden City Diversity Commission is not recommending approval, citing historians’ claims of possible involuntary servitude of Native Americans by Goodyear, resulting in conflicting recommendations for the City Council to act on.
City Council Vice Chair Luis Lopez said he feels the two commissions should work together to come up with a cohesive recommendation.
Glenn Symes, senior policy analyst for the city, said the two commissions will have different recommendations as they view things from different perspectives, with one looking at land use and the other at cultural and historical appropriateness.
“This is exactly why we should fix this ordinance,” Councilman Richard Hyer said.
Brierley, however, said it’s really up to the council to decide. According to city documents, the council has no clear guidelines to follow on the matter.
