Vision for Sandy
Smart growth
Sandy City flag
From its origins as farming community with few people and wide open
spaces, Sandy has grown to become the fourth largest suburban community in Utah and one of the
most desirable places to live in the Salt Lake metro area. A
gateway to unparalleled recreation areas, Sandy not only hosts visitors from around the country, but from around the world. With 95% of Sandy developed, land is a precious resource to consider as government focuses on responsible growth. Responsible growth has minimal
impact on the viability of our neighborhoods and roads and also improves our
quality of life. This "win-win" has been lacking during the
Gravel Pit development discussion.
Resolve pressing issues
Many citizens have expressed concerns about the number of large commercial
buildings that have remained vacant now for years. They have considered questions such as these:
- How do we encourage reuse
of this commercial space into something that contributes to the quality of
life in Sandy while contributing tax base to support city services?
- Why
don't we focus more energy placing new business in these existing locations
to help maintain the commercial viability throughout Sandy City?
- How wise is it to allow large scale retail growth in a brand new area that
will likely lead to the demise of many small and medium size businesses that
have served our community over many years?
- Is it right that we favor one new
location over many other existing commercial locations where large scale
retail could be more easily accommodated?
- Ultimately, is our community
better off by just shifting the source of its sales tax revenue from smaller
local business to large scale retail that does not have the same positive
economic impact on our city?
Citizen voice
Sandy City should look at other options in relocating Wal-Mart and Lowe's.
Without a doubt, these retail operations provide products and services valuable to many in the
community; they are also a large source of sales tax revenue for the city. Ultimately, however, the citizens of Sandy should also have a say in where they
should be most appropriately located — in a location where supporting infrastructure already exists and where they will contribute to the viability of our economic base without undermining
our existing commercial centers/small and medium businesses.
Quality of life
Gary T. Forbush is committed to working with businesses of all sizes to ensure Sandy has a
strong and diverse economic base from which we can support the quality of
life we enjoy in both our neighborhoods and commercial areas.
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