In the News

Turner joined his colleague at HEAL Utah to talk about environmental law, Earth Day and HEAL's first-ever stand-up comedy night. RadioACTive passed the mic to Melanie Hall, HEAL's policy director, and Turner Bitton, development director.

https://www.mixcloud.com/KRCLradio/radioactive-april-11-2023/

In the 15 years Levi and Michelle de Oliveira lived in their Glendale house, they watched as the water stopped running through slides at the Raging Waters park.

The decorative rocks that separated the fiberglass characters that used to greet kids to the park eventually were covered in graffiti. The amenity that once made neighbors proud became an area that concerned them.

“It’s been an abandoned block for too long,” Levi de Oliveira said. “And we’ve had a lot of problems with crime and homelessness, and you name it.”

Being just a few blocks away from the shuttered water park meant the couple were closer to these issues, he said. But over the past nine months, he has received at least a call a week from real estate buyers asking about the home.

So, what changed?

Michelle de Oliveira believes the callers are home flippers who haven’t offered a sweet enough deal yet. Her husband has another theory: They may be drawn to the redevelopment of the former water park into the ambitious Glendale Regional Park.

Once completed, the 17-acre project will include an outdoor pool, trail connector, open green space, playgrounds and a skating ribbon, among other amenities. Perks also will feature a connection to the Jordan River Trail and easy access to downtown.

The park’s first phase is expected to open by next year.

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A Riley Elementary mural painted in memorial of former teacher
Jessica Schroeder by her mother, Allison Schroeder, depicts values of curiosity
and a love of learning in a bright, buoyant scene. Photo by Angie Toone.

 

A new public mural dedicated to the memory of Jessica Schroeder, a loved and dearly missed educator at Riley Elementary School who passed away in 2021, has found its home at the school. Unveiled in November of 2022, the mural was painted by the late teacher’s mother, Allison Schroeder, as part of an outdoor learning space that features little free libraries, reading rocks, exploratory gardens, and a relaxing seating area for visitors to enjoy.

Jessica Schroeder valued curiosity and worked hard to foster a love of learning in her students, and this sentiment is captured in the imagery of the public artwork. The mural depicts her reading a book in the foreground while children explore outside in the background, surrounded by monarch butterflies, prickly pear cactuses, rainbows, and gold stars. The space is meant to help Schroeder’s students and colleagues grieve, explore their feelings, and feel peace about losing their beloved teacher. The space is also open to the public.

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Before Turner Bitton became an outspoken advocate for the west side and the chair of his neighborhood council, he lived in Ogden and tried multiple times to move to Salt Lake City.

Five years ago, he finally bought a home in Glendale. It was tough to pull that off then. It would be frighteningly harder today as his house doubled in price.

As stories of displacement and housing unaffordability kept coming Bitton’s way, it made him think of why people want to live in Utah’s capital and how, as a neighbor, to make that possible.

“I viewed Salt Lake City as the goal and the place where I wanted to be,” he said. “I love living in a place that has a diversity of incomes, diversity of people from all over the world, all kinds of cultures.”

The city then published “Thriving in Place,” a report showing the breadth of these displacements. For Bitton, that became a catalyst to gather other affordable housing advocates to support policies that add density to neighborhoods.

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The shell of Tejeda’s Market is all that remains of the once popular neighborhood shop within walking distance for Glendale residents.

The building at 1179 S. Navajo St. on Salt Lake City’s west side had to make way for more homes.

Neighbors saw Tejeda’s lights turn off and a chain enclose its parking lot. They then waited to see crews break ground on the new residential development.

They’re still waiting — and will be for at least another year.

The Salt Lake City planning commission has approved a request for a 12-month extension from Axis Architects to submit complete building plans for its two-acre Glendale Townhomes project as the site undergoes an environmental assessment.

While those details are being finalized, the plot still houses Tejeda’s former building, and some residents worry the area could become a magnet for other issues.

“It’s starting to become a real problem,” Turner Bitton, chair of the Glendale Neighborhood Council, warned. “It’s just sitting empty, and over the summer there was a break in the water and there was some flooding that happened there. I’m afraid that the longer that it sits empty, the more likely we’re going to have vandalism or maybe a fire.”

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Salt Lake City’s latest stab at encouraging more residents to build add-on dwellings to help ease a housing crisis is pulling into sharper focus.

The City Council got an earful from the public Tuesday on new proposals for expanding where and how smaller accessory homes such as backyard cottages and granny flats can be constructed, and for cutting red tape to make the process easier.

The draft changes on accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are now tentatively set for final approval Feb. 21 — with much consensus building still to come.

“I just want to put that out there for the public that we are still very much discussing,” council Chair Darin Mano said, “and still trying to see where we land.”

The proposed overhaul comes as Utah’s capital faces dire shortages of homes of all kinds, a gap made worse by pandemic-induced demand and recent growth spurts. In addition, the city’s existing rules on ADUs haven’t yielded as many new dwellings as folks at City Hall had hoped.

Council members and Mayor Erin Mendenhall have made clear they see removing barriers and streamlining the path for more tiny homes in a wider range of neighborhoods and commercial areas as a critical step.

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Trekking along the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake — the largest remaining saltwater lake in the western hemisphere — can feel eerie and lonely.

"These might even be my footprints from last week," says Carly Biedul, pointing to indents in the mud. Biedul is a biologist with the Great Salt Lake Institute. She's bundled up in an orange puffy jacket, gloves and hat. Most important she's wearing thick, sturdy, rubber boots.

The mud with a frozen, slick layer of ice on top gets treacherous. One thing that's hard to prepare for though, is the stench: a pungent odor like sulfur and dead fish. But it's actually a good thing, a sign of a biologically healthy saline lake.

"People have been saying that they miss the lake stink because it just makes them feel like home," Biedul says. "It's just not here [much] anymore, so you're lucky that it gets to smell so bad."

Lucky? Maybe one small bright spot in an otherwise grim story of a looming ecological disaster. The lake doesn't really stink anymore because it's drying ... and dying.

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Salt Lake City Council to consider proposal to potentially allow homeless shelters in most parts of the city

Homeless shelters soon could be allowed across most of Salt Lake City under a proposal that would overhaul how Utah’s capital regulates where they are located.

Planning officials are asking the City Council to consider scrapping the old way of approving shelters — including homeless resource centers — in favor of a new process that they say will boost public engagement and give council members more power in deciding where such facilities go.

“It gives the city, and specifically the City Council, the ability to consider the context of an area in which a potential future shelter may be situated,” Mayor Erin Mendenhall said, “which is not an ability that we had in our previous ordinance.”

While a number of community leaders embrace the idea, some fear the switch could further politicize the placement of homeless shelters — by shifting the decision to elected council members — and ultimately make it more difficult to provide such centers.

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What was nearly a united show of support from an overflow crowd for a proposed west-side village of tiny houses was broken up by moments of skepticism and concern.

Skepticism that The Other Side Academy has what it takes to run such a settlement for chronically homeless Utahns. Concern that the project would bring more problems to the west side, where residents have long felt they have carried a disproportionate share of the burden in battling the homelessness crisis.

“Why do we have to shoulder the cost of helping everyone in the city so often?” Levi de Oliveira, a Salt Lake City planning commissioner, asked City Council members Tuesday evening.

The proposed pilot phase of The Other Side Village calls for creating 85 tiny homes — 54 for unsheltered Utahns, six for on-site staffers and 25 as rentals for visitors, volunteers and the public. It would occupy 8 city-owned acres west of Redwood Road between Indiana Avenue and 500 South, but could expand if the project proves viable.

The Other Side Academy, the nonprofit that would build and operate the village, depends on the council’s approval of a rezoning request and deeply discounted land lease before it can start moving any dirt.

Most of those who showed up at the council’s first public hearing for the project backed the proposal.

Many said The Other Side Academy has already shown itself to be a worthy partner with its success running a residential vocational training program east of downtown. The venture serves convicted criminals and people with substance use disorders.

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