WEST JORDAN, Utah -- West Jordan City Council members denied a development proposal during Wednesday night's city council meeting.
The project would have been called The Station at Gardner Mill, and the proposed housing development in West Jordan is not receiving a warm welcome from some nearby neighbors.
The proposed project was slated for the north east corner of 7800 South and 1300 West.
"I'm livid,” one resident said. “Please vote against this, thank you."
That was the tone from many who spoke at Wednesday night's West Jordan City Council meeting against the proposed development. It was slated for a plot of land in a prime area for development, which is why developer Joe Colosimo wanted to build a 224-unit apartment complex.
"It's in a great location next to TRAX, I know that UTA is high on density around their TRAX stops to encourage ridership, I think it compliments Gardner Village and those are some of the positive aspects of it," he said.
The project was part of West Jordan's larger development plans that Colosimo said would only improve the city.
"I think at the end of the day, it'll make the area safer and economically viable," he added.
But some nearby residents believed otherwise, and they were not happy about the proposed project.
"The justification for zoning this property so heavily is that people will utilize it as a transit oriented development, part of transit oriented development is including that commercial component, that's not what they're doing here," Cynthia Bee said.
Ben Watson agrees, saying: "It's going to bring transient residents, not residents that are going to stay here in West Jordan for a long time. My wife and I have been in West Jordan for almost 18 years, that's what we want West Jordan to be a destination city, not some place that people just try out and then move away from."
We brought those concerns to the city officials, who said there is no commercial element to this phase of their overall development plan, but with three more phases to come, the area will fall within zoning guidelines and mixed use requirements.
Development Director Tom Burdett said, "There's two more phases to Gardner Village and another phase to another retail development on the west side of this phase."
