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The front of the old Brown Ice Cream building at 2557 Grant Ave., within the footprint of the “Wonder Block” area off the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022. The Wonder Block property is the focus of a major city redevelopment effort.
Tim Vandenack, Standard Examiner
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The city-owned property where the “Capitol Square” project is to take shape off the south side of 24th Street between Monroe Boulevard and Quincy Avenue in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022.
Tim Vandenack, Standard Examiner
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The city-owned property where the “Capitol Square” project is to take shape off the south side of 24th Street between Monroe Boulevard and Quincy Avenue in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022.
Tim Vandenack, Standard Examiner
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The old Brown Ice Cream building at 2557 Grant Ave., within the footprint of the “Wonder Block” area off the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022. The Wonder Block property is the focus of a major city redevelopment effort.
Tim Vandenack, Standard Examiner
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The front of the old Brown Ice Cream building at 2557 Grant Ave., within the footprint of the “Wonder Block” area off the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022. The Wonder Block property is the focus of a major city redevelopment effort.
The city-owned property where the “Capitol Square” project is to take shape off the south side of 24th Street between Monroe Boulevard and Quincy Avenue in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022.
The city-owned property where the “Capitol Square” project is to take shape off the south side of 24th Street between Monroe Boulevard and Quincy Avenue in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022.
The old Brown Ice Cream building at 2557 Grant Ave., within the footprint of the “Wonder Block” area off the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues in Ogden, is photographed Friday, July 22, 2022. The Wonder Block property is the focus of a major city redevelopment effort.
OGDEN — It’s a common gripe among developers, says Janene Eller-Smith, who helps run the administrative side of Ogden City Council operations — they feel left out by the city.
“The biggest complaint that you hear, that we hear in our office, is that it’s really hard to do business with the city,” Eller-Smith told City Council members during a work session earlier this month.
That is, developers say they don’t know how to approach city officials, how to get consideration for city redevelopment initiatives and moves to build anew on the handful of vacant and abandoned properties the city acquires. “We don’t know how to do it. We’re not in the know,” they’ll lament, Eller-Smith said.
It was a topic of discussion 20 years ago. Eller-Smith said a study on the issue from 2002 that a city staffer unearthed recommends crafting a policy spelling out how developers are to be picked to handle city projects. But it’s also been the focus of some prickly back-and-forth in City Council chambers more recently, along with renewed and ongoing discussion among city officials about how to address the issue.
The stakes are notable, as city development projects sometimes involve prime real estate and use of public funds to entice developers.
Most recently, Ogden economic development officials have been pushing for development on two prime pieces of largely vacant property the city acquired. One is the 5-plus acre “Wonder Block” property off the north side of 26th Street between Lincoln and Grant avenues. The other is the “Capitol Square” site off the south side 24th Street between Monroe Boulevard and Quincy Avenue. JF Capital of Centerville is the parent company of the firms involved in development at both sites.
City Councilperson Richard Hyer, speaking at the July 12 work session, suggested optics figured in the issue, the need to dispel the notion that development decisions were rooted in a “good old boys” network. “I think what we’re trying to eliminate is the appearance of, ‘OK, I have a good relationship with you,'” therefore developer selection is a foregone conclusion, he said.
Last year, City Councilperson Ben Nadolski offered a bleaker assessment when officials discussed the issue.
“My opinion is that there are a lot of people in Ogden whose confidence has been shaken, people that want to do business in Ogden but can’t do business in Ogden because they don’t feel they have a fair chance,” he said at on Aug. 17, 2021, work session. “That’s the feedback I continually hear. It’s the kind of feedback I don’t know what to do with.”
The fix officials are currently mulling calls for creation of a database in Ogden’s Community and Economic Development office of developers and others in related fields — architecture and engineering, for instance — that would be interested in being considered for city projects. The businesses would need to submit their contact information to the city and specify the sort of projects they would be able to handle.
“We can’t have a guy that’s in a $5 million project do a $50 million project. Maybe they don’t have that capacity,” Eller-Smith said.
Formal solicitation of proposals would be the preferred method to identify developers, according to the proposed scheme. But economic development officials could also pull from the proposed database to aid in the process, if need be. City Councilperson Luis Lopez, for one, expressed support for the change, though it will face continued discussion, probably involving reps from the administration of Mayor Mike Caldwell.
“This is a super great, important step,” Lopez said.
Even so, it can be a touchy issue and sparks have flown at times.
Ogden resident Heath Satow, for one, has repeatedly addressed the issue of developer selection at City Council meetings when the public is invited to comment. He has expressed particular ire over the process the city followed in selling the old Brown Ice Cream building in 2019, which is within the Wonder Block footprint. The fact that only one developer, JF Capital, is linked to development on the Wonder Block and Capitol Square properties is also a sore point.
In Satow’s view, the process the city follows isn’t open or transparent enough, even if it is within legal parameters. At the June 21 Ogden City Council meeting, he singled out JF Capital’s connection to the Wonder Block and Capitol Square projects.
“I believe the process needs to be changed to stop allowing these types of projects to happen without any sort of RFP (process),” he said. He was alluding to the formal process whereby cities and other government entities make requests for proposals, or RFPs, from the private sector for development plans, letting as many developers as interested submit proposals.
What’s more, Ogden had more actively sought out offers from the private sector on the vacant Brown Ice Cream building at 2557 Grant Ave., he thinks the city could have fetched more money — much more, perhaps. As is, Ogden businessman Dan McEntee acquired the 100-year-old building for about $100,000.
Satow has repeatedly sought answers to his questions from city officials but hasn’t been satisfied with the responses. He expanded on his concerns in an email to the Standard Examiner.
When just “a small ring of close connections have a chance at a massive project, the city loses any insight as to what could have been,” Satow said. “We don’t know what we’ve already potentially lost, and we don’t know what else we will miss out on in the future if nothing changes. If we are spending massive amounts of city money and time on these projects, they should be open to ideas from anyone qualified, and the selection process should be utterly honest and the only way to do that is if everything within reason is public and transparent. ”
Satow, whose longtime partner, Angel Castillo, unsuccessfully ran for Ogden mayor in 2019 and is heavily involved in Ogden civic affairs, has also pointed his finger at Caldwell’s administration in his addresses to the City Council. The mayor, for his part, rebuffs Satow’s contentions and suggestions, saying the selection process the city has followed on development projects has been aboveboard.
“In my opinion, we have pushed everything that we had out,” he said at the June 7 City Council meeting in response to public comments Satow made at the gathering. “Whether that’s the answer people want to hear or not is a whole different story, but I feel we have been transparent about that and open.”
He also emphasized that he wasn’t involved in the Brown Ice Cream building deal and that, generally speaking, he doesn’t play a central role in development deals involving the city.
“A lot of those deals are done way beyond my purview,” Caldwell said. “It’s not me. I don’t get to make those decisions. It goes to legal, it goes through the department. It goes through our finance committee. It goes through a whole bunch of other groups, so to say that I get to just put my stamp of approval on anything out there is not fair. That’s just not how the process works.”
In an interview with the Standard-Examiner, Caldwell reiterated his comments — the city follows legal procedure in development deals.
He noted the three-year process in crafting the Make Ogden plan, which outlines the long-term redevelopment vision for a wide swath of the downtown area, including the Wonder Block zone. According to Caldwell, developers, among many others, took part in the process, underscoring the fact that development goals are not secrets or hidden from the public. What’s more, he said, the city is limited in what it can do to encourage interest by developers — it can’t force them to take part in projects.
City Councilperson Marcia White, too, said Ogden has followed “the letter of the law” in working with the private sector on development plans.
As for interest and participation in city projects, she noted that not all developers are qualified for every redevelopment plan the city pursues. They may not have the financial backing or the required expertise for a given project.
“It’s kind of a difficult spot sometimes,” she said. “How do you find consultants or developers that can meet that criteria?”
That said, she favors the discussions the City Council is having on the selection process, of creating a database of developers so the city is better positioned to give them a heads up when projects are taking shape.
“I honestly think a set consultant pool is a good idea,” she said.
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