Mike Bastian, representing developer Hutzley Inc. of Farr West, gave general details of the project concept to Ogden City Council members Tuesday, as the panel considered two preliminary measures that would clear the way for the project to be fleshed out.

The Wangsgards building, one of three defunct grocery stores at the Five Points intersection, is on the northeast corner of Washington Boulevard and Second Street. The site has been vacant for years, although a sandwich shop and other businesses remain in operation in an adjacent strip.

“We believe in the area, that’s kind of been forgotten about,” Bastian told the council. “We do want to bring it back.”

The developer envisions multifamily and single-family housing, plus commercial elements and open space. The open space may include a dog park and pickleball courts, Bastian said.

Image supplied, Ogden City

The council was asked Tuesday to approve vacating First Street behind the old grocery store, between Adams Avenue and Washington. “It’s literally a landlocked piece, with a homeless camp back there,” Bastian said, with corroborating testimony from Joe Simpson, an Ogden City senior planner.

A second proposal was to alter zoning of the First Street ground involved, so zoning of the entire proposed development block would be uniform.

Bastian said that if the city vacates the never-developed street and changes the zoning, the developer’s intent is to buy the vacated strip from the city.

But the council tabled both measures for later consideration after council member Richard Hyer said he wanted to know more of the developer’s plans for the block. He wondered how the project might fit in with the city’s plans for possibly attracting another grocery store at Five Points or elsewhere in the northern part of the city.

The city had two viable grocery stores at Five Points for half a century before the Wangsgards building closure and the subsequent demise of the Harmon’s, then Ridley’s, operations at the intersection’s northwest quadrant.

Hyer said he hopes the new development would have significant ground-floor businesses. “It would be very shortsighted of us to take a historically commercial area and convert it to all residences, and we would be mourning the loss of that use for decades to come,” he said.

Bastian said the developers have bought an old home on Adams Avenue behind the old store, with plans to remodel and sell it as an owner-occupied home. He said that as the project comes to fruition, a second older home also will be remodeled and two new homes will be built on some of the ground that would be freed up with the First Street action.

“This will improve the whole residential feel on Adams,” he said, with the rest of that First Street ground available for open space and additional parking for the new development.