'Moving the Line' in Ogden May Work in SLC

None by KCPW

Redevelopment Agency Considering Ways to Improve Neighborhoods

(KCPW News) Reviving Salt Lake City neighborhoods is on the agenda at tomorrow's meeting of the city's Redevelopment Agency. RDA Chair and District 1 City Councilman Carlton Christensen says a program in Ogden called "Moving the Line" might work in the Capital City:

"Up in the Ogden City neighborhoods, where they had a perception in an area that would be west of a certain street there, that people wouldn't want to come and buy homes there and people were discouraged from buying homes there, and the city felt like the best way to do that was to start a street at a time or in essence ‘move the line' -- and so they would come in and reinvest in three or four houses on the block that were the worst houses"

It created momentum for improvement, with adjacent property owners fixing up their homes, which, in turn, attracted private investors to an area perceived as blighted. Christensen says he'd like to use Community Development Areas (CDA), a new tool created by state lawmakers, to spur reinvestment in Salt Lake City neighborhoods down on their luck:

"They give us the ability to go into an area without going through the whole [RDA] blight process, but I think we would want to focus on neighborhoods who clearly have the highest challenge; and I think work with our school districts - if there are schools that are suffering from [low] enrollment that could use an influx of families, that maybe those are some of the neighborhoods we'd want to focus on first."

Christensen says prime neighborhoods in Central City, especially around Liberty Park and Poplar Grove, are prime candidates for a CDA. But tomorrow's discussion is preliminary given that two new city council members will come on board in January and will have the right to weigh in on the subject. The City Council acts at the RDA's board of directors.

Today's Midday Metro featured an interview with Christensen on "Moving the Line."

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