Celebs Love Us

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Movie makers and celebrities love Utah for so many reasons. Our natural beauty is a draw with our Big 5 national park vistas. Our workforce is well versed in all things movie and TV making and Utah loves to give out tax incentives for films to be made here. Just in the past decade Utah saw $600 million in movie revenue brought to the state with $300 million going to rural communities.  Those in the industry call us ‘Little Hollywood’ and the proof is in the pudding with so many successful films and TV series created here over the years. You can check out the free “100 Years of Utah Film & Television” exhibit on the fourth floor of the Utah Capitol building (wait til the legislature ends March 1st for any chance of parking!) which runs until December 2024 to learn more about our film history.

What are the most famous films and series that were shot here? In recent decades: Napoleon Dynamite, Footloose, The Sandlot, High School Musical, Dumb and Dumber, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut, Star Trek (2009), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Legally Blonde 2, Thelma and Louise, Planet of the Apes and Independence Day, to name a few. There have been numerous TV shows filmed here, like Touched By an Angel, Andi Mack, Big Love, Westworld, Grizzly Adams, Yellowstone, and of course The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.

Kevin Costner is in the process of building a film studio in St. George on 500 acres near the new airport, at a cost of $40 million. He loves our Utah scenery and has just shot two episodes of a four-part movie series called “Horizon: An American Saga”. Apparently, Costner has had issues filming interior scenes in his movies here and will build two sound studios, a production warehouse, offices and even a ‘Costner-themed’ restaurant to further his investment here in the state. Previously he shot the first three seasons of Yellowstone in the Park City area.

As far as celebrities go, singer Post Malone was rumored to be leaving Utah but said in a recent statement on X, “I’m not moving out of Utah y’all”.  Rapper NBA YoungBoy Never Broke Again just listed his home in Olympus Cove for $5.5 mil. The almost 9,000 sq. ft mansion on 1.46 acres features a five car garage and a pool with unobstructed views of the Salt Lake Valley.  He had been confined to his home for the past two years by the court while he awaits a federal trial but is ready to get the hell out of here now. Whitney Rose (The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) and her husband Justin have sold their $2.1 million home in Daybreak with their hidden ‘Speakeasy’ bar after it being on the market for only a month and have announced they have purchased another home in Utah.

 

Selling Tips for Spring

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Traditionally people like to wait until Spring to put their home on the market. If they have kids, they might be out of school in May so April is a good time to go to market. Right now there are so few homes available that it’s a really great time to sell because of low competition and still multiple offer battles.

To get ready to sell here are some tips:

Enhance curb appeal by freshening up landscaping, planting colorful flowers and even give the front door a new coat of paint. Replace or clean your mailbox if it’s by the door.

Embrace spring cleaning! Declutter, organize and pack. Depersonalize your interior spaces so buyers can picture themselves in your space.

Highlight outdoor spaces by staging your patio or deck with cozy furniture that invites outdoor entertaining in the summertime. Optimize natural light and clean windows. We always have your windows cleaned before listing at no charge-makes such a difference!

Buyers will have inspections, so you might want to get ahead of the game and get a radon test and sewer scope to ensure there are no issues that will bite you while you’re under contract. Even a home inspection can help deter problems. Call if you need referrals for inspectors!

Putting Down Roots

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Often people believe that the first homes in Utah were built in Salt Lake City upon Brigham Young and his followers supposedly claiming, ‘This is the place!’ He led his Mormons here and founded Salt Lake City in 1947 and over the following decade 90 Mormon settlements arose in the state. Nope, the first recorded home in the state built by a white man was in Odgen, and it’s still standing almost 200 years later.

The Miles Goodyear cabin was built in 1947 by a fur trapper and trader who built his home made up of wood that he hand-sawed from the cottonwood trees along the banks. He is credited with creating Fort Buenaventura there which became a home base for Goodyear, his Ute wife Pomona and their kids, other natives, trappers and travelers heading across the country. The fort had four log cabins, corrals, sheds and a large garden enclosed behind log walls surrounding the site. He sold the fort, his animals and all the buildings there to a Mormon named James Brown for $1,950 and the area became known as Brownsville, then later as Odgen.

Only rich people had homes with hardwood or stone floors back in the day, and for centuries most humans had lived with dirt floors. Thus came the phrase ‘dirt poor’ to identify those without enough money for a nicer abode. During the winter occupants would throw down straw over their dirt floors to soak up mud and snow tracked into their cabins. Straw, unlike hay, is the stalks of grains like wheat after the seeds have been removed and this is called ‘thresh’. Many cabin owners in the day would then put a board across the floor of the main door’s entrance to keep the thresh inside the home, which is where we get the phrase, ‘thresh hold’.

Goodyear himself was orphaned at the age of four and according to history spent most of his youth as an indentured servant. Like so many optimists he headed west to find his fortune and became a successful trapper and trader of fur pelts. When he finally settled down in now Odgen he built the fort to protect his family and livestock. He did marry the daughter of the Ute Chief Pe-teet-neet, so he may have just needed protection from bears and cougars rather than native tribes. His optimism led him to sell the fort and seek gold in the Sierra Nevada’s. He did find the ore but died at the age of 32 in 1849.

You can visit the Fort and camp there along the river anytime between April and November. It’s a Utah State Park with 84 acres with cabin replicas, a visitor center, Goodyear’s cabin, picnic tables, canoe rentals, restrooms and an annual Mountain Man Easter Rendezvous and OFOAM’s Odgen Music festival. There’s also an 18-hole championship disc golf course where competitions are held regularly.

Co-Housing

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Back in 1998 a revolutionary concept was offered to Utah homebuyers: co-housing. The notion was based on similar projects in Europe where homes/condos/townhomes are clustered around each other to create ‘intentional community’. Wasatch Commons (@1400 South 1500 West) was built on 4.5 acres in the Glendale neighborhood with 26 townhomes. I was the original listing agent for the project and trying to explain the idea to folks was a challenge for the most part, however some people not only understood the idea immediately, but they also wanted IN!  Why?

Co-housing comes in different forms around the world. Here, the townhomes in WC have different floorplans, and you own your unit (although some owners rent out their units). You must park on the west edge of the community and walk-in to your property; thus you pass by your neighbors front doors every day along the beautiful winding paths in the project. There is a common house with guest rooms for owners’ guests and where there are regular shared meals and events for the owners and tenants who live there, a workshop and car repair bay, an exercise room, community fruit trees and garden pots, play areas for kids and lovely green spaces throughout. They are self-managed, and everyone has a say in how things are run throughout the year.

Since 1998 there have been no other co-housing projects built in Utah to my knowledge, and that’s a shame. The only new idea for a co-housing-like project is a tiny home village by the Other Side Academy planned for the northwest side of the Salt Lake Valley. However, the concept is gaining traction around the country since housing is so expensive. Culdesac in Tempe, Arizona has opened and is getting rave reviews. It’s all built around the idea of no cars and that people are happier in a walkable neighborhood. Residents get free rides on the Metro (a station is a short walk away), 15% off Lyft rides, Bird scooters are on site and there’s 1,000+bike parking spotsl. It is a rental community with studios to three bedroom units. There are 50+ shared courtyards that meander around the grounds with two plus miles of bike and footpaths, zero square feet of asphalt, 700 apartments and 44,000 square feet of retail and amenities for small, local businesses, a pool and dog park. Each unit has a washer and dryer, plenty of natural light and is very pet friendly. It’s billed as a ‘5-minute city’ because you’re only minutes away from an urban market, a bike shop and cozy places to eat. There are firepits, BBQ grills and water features (but the landscaping is desert/low water), and hammocks scattered around the 17 acres there.

Back here all we need is a futuristic developer and land for the next co-housing project. The time is now for ideas and actions for affordable housing options in Utah’s future!

Getting Greener

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Who knew that a single head of lettuce can take up to 25-years to decompose in a landfill!  Momentum Recycling who picks up our paper waste in Salt Lake County wants to educate us that food waste gives off gases when it decomposes, like methane that’s 23 times stronger than the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Food waste in landfills also emit ammonia which really does a number on increasing our crappy winter inversion air. So far we haven’t had any home pick-up service to get food waste. Recycling minded individuals in Salt Lake County can dispose of their food scraps by taking them to HelloBulk! at 1185 S. 300 W. (a local drygoods and refill store), The Front Climbing Club at 1470 S. 400 W. and Wasatch Resource Recovery at 1370 W. Center Street in North Salt Lake. This latter company has Utah’s first anaerobic digester that can process organic and food waste to turn it into sustainable natural gas and fertilizer. For under $20 a month you can get a bucket delivered to your home with another bucket inside of it with a roll of compostable bags. Collect your food waste and then place it on the curb in the larger bucket every week and voila! The waste will be turned into good gas.  Certainly you can also throw scraps into your garden, but if you’re not one who possesses the passion given to those born with a green thumb, sign up with Momentum or get it to one of the collection sites.

Salt Lake City suspends brown curbside yard waste cans from being emptied from January 22 to March 3, 2024 to save fuel costs and reduce emissions in the valley, with the exception of dead Christmas trees. Do you have a holiday tree that needs to be composed? They ask that you cut up your tree and place it out in your brown bin, and especially don’t over-pack the bin so nothing shakes out. Make sure that you remove all ornaments, lights and tinsel before you load up your bin. If you live along the Wasatch front other than Salt Lake City, your tree will be picked up the day after your regularly scheduled collection day in January from Jan 4-31st. Do NOT put the tree in your waste cans or recycle cans. Flocked trees are NO BUENO for recycling of any kind. If the tree is over 8 ft. gall, cut it in half and leave it by the curb, and if snow covers it up, uncover it? Murray, Draper, SOJO, and Cashe Valley have drop off sites for dead trees. Provo will pick up trees on the curb and St. George has drop offs at the Reuse Center on Brigham Road. Here’s a great site for drop off rules around the state: pickyourownchristmastree.org/UtahTreeRecyclingDisposal. Freshly cut Christmas trees last between 4-5 weeks if properly watered.

Water, Water

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“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink” is from a poem from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge. Imagine living with a view of the Great Salt Lake and knowing that all that water south of Willard Bay is undrinkable. It might gnaw at you knowing that being surrounded by or within close proximity of it you can’t benefit much from the salty water except to rely on helping it to create great powdery snow in our winter and create the random ‘lake effect’ that boosts some storms into mega downpours.

This phrase also may relate to residents of Summit County, especially those living in Oakley City. Although there are lakes and rivers surrounding the town that saw massive spring runoff from the Unitah mountains which increased the flow during last year’s massive snowpack, it’s only now that the area is seeing more water.  You see, back in May of 2021 the Oakley City Council was forced to adopt the following moratorium: Ordinance 2021-6: “Moratorium on all building permit approvals requiring a new connection or extension of an existing connection to city water and a moratorium on installation of new landscaping that requires irrigation with the city culinary water.” The town leaders had to stop all building permits of land improvements such as new homes because the multi-year drought leading up to 2021 created a very scary situation for the area and they wanted to avoid a potential water crisis which could have created a scarcity for the city’s current residents. The Council was also worried that if they did run out of water there wouldn’t be any way to fight fires in and around the town. Projects that already had permits were allowed to continue but no permits requiring water connections were allowed for six months, and the Council had to extend the moratorium longer than expected to find more resources. Residents were encouraged to restrict water use to outdoor watering every other day to help ease the demand.

Fast forward to November 2023 and the City Council has now lifted its moratorium on new development and is now allowing new water hookups/permits. How so? It appears that a very deep well has been found and the City will be able to tap into it come June of 2024. Officials believe that this new source of water will quadruple its current supply to the approximately 1,500 residents of the town.

This pause in construction was unique in modern days to a Utah town but many Western states and towns have also had to restrict building permits, such as communities in and around Monterey, California. Luckily we had a ton of snow last year and a good spring so drought has ended in much of California, Nevada and Utah for now. As the locals here say, ‘Fast and pray’, or PRAY FAST that we have a great snow year!

If Wishes Were Fishes

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It’s that time of the year when many folks make new years resolutions. Hell, I stopped doing that years ago because I was a failure at keeping my promises to myself. It would be more appropriate to say what I wish for, dream about, to wit:

-that anyone living in a major Utah city must be required to recycle at least paper and plastic and that if it’s unaffordable then the local governments should kick in part of the cost.  Around two-thirds of all paper products in the U.S. are being recycled but only 10% of plastics are recycled.

-that public transit (UTA buses, TRAX, light rail) should be free-always. I pushed for that when I was a board member at UTA and generally got laughs, but with our bad air and all the new construction of ‘transit oriented’ new housing in our major cities Utah needs to help not just the air but give a break for low income folks as well. I believe ‘Santa Cox’ likes the idea but the legislature has to figure out how to fund it. There’s talk on the hill that there may be a one year pilot program to test an all free transit system.

-massive new affordable housing options. There is a ton of land owned by the state, local governments and even non-profits/churches that could be dedicated to extremely low income, permanent housing. For those people in the service sector making poor hourly wages, single parents and especially seniors on fixed incomes need help now and will need more help in the future as prices go up for housing, utilities, food, insurance, transportation, etc.

-95% of the men I know personally are terrific people. My dream is that they convince the other 5% that are warlords, rapists, and murderers of women, elders and children around the world to stop the violence. Women could pull the old Lysistrata story out, where sex is withheld from men until they stop warring, but both past and modern history prove that this 5% don’t care about women and will rape and murder them regardless in their quests for power, control, and money.

Finally, I wish that 2024-the next presidential year for us-doesn’t turn into utter hell of worse vitriol than what’s currently out there and that by some magnificent miracle the U.S. Congress figures out budgeting solutions and passes reasonable bi-partisan bills. This current Congress proved to be the 2nd laziest, most embittered group ever elected.  The 118th Congress is on track to be one of the most unproductive in modern history, with just a couple dozen laws on the books at the close of 2023. This is the fewest since at least the 101st Congress in 1989.

If wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets. May you have a great year end and may we all survive 2024!

Green Money Savings

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I think it’s safe to say that we all want to have a healthy planet and that anything we can do to be greener and more eco-friendly will help, even just a little.  Owning a home and attempting to go greener can be costly, but a recent study from Rewiring America has come up with a way to budget to improve reducing your impact on global warming, to wit:

If you have under $500, you can change out your light bulbs and even some fixtures to be more energy efficient. Incandescent bulbs are history so installing compact fluorescent lighting or light-emitting diode bulbs (LEDS) will save you hundreds in electric bills each year. Installing a smart thermostat so you can turn down the heat or up your AC temperature in the summer while you’re not home is really great now that we can control these things with our phones. The estimated savings for both these items is $480. With a budget of $1,000-$5,000 you can install an electric charger for your electric vehicle at home, which should cost around $2,500 and save you @ $1,000 plus a 30% tax credit. Another item that will help is to slowly replace your windows, a few at a time, within your yearly budget of under $5,000. It’s also extremely inexpensive to blow in more insulation into your attic to save on heating and cooling bills-also under $5,000.  Also for less than $5,000 you can install a more efficient water heater and/or a heat pump water heater. Hell, and for less than $100 you can wrap your water heater now in insulation and that will save you money and help save the planet!

Another website, greenamerica.org found that in many households, the dryer is the third-most energy-hungry appliance after the refrigerator and washer. Air-drying your clothes can reduce the average household’s carbon footprint by a whopping 2,400 pounds a year. According to the Netherlands Statistical Office, 75% of households in the US own a clothes dryer but about half of households in Europe own one. According to FEMA, clothes dryer vents become clogged with lint and cause up to 15,000 house fires every year. You can dry your clothes outside in good weather but many can’t commit to doing that in the winter. Find a space in your basement or storage area to dry clothes and get a clothes rack off the web. Get a floor fan and turn it on a low setting to dry the items and you will find that you will use a lot less electricity than you would use when operating a dryer. Also, drying clothes inside can have an added benefit, as it helps to keep indoor winter air moist like a low-tech humidifier.

 

Are You Thriving?

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You might have heard the term ‘thriving in place’ as of late when it comes to Salt Lake City and the City Council. What does it mean and how does it impact you and I? If you want to do some deep diving on your own skip ahead and go to www.thrivinginplaceslc.org and you can get the 411 on how the Council and citizens are attempting to analyze and understand gentrification and displacement in various neighborhoods. The goal is to create a plan of action like many other cities in the country experiencing similar issues are attempting to do as well.

City officials started the process in two phases: 1) listening and learning from their constituents  about their experiences of gentrification and displacement and documenting various community assets such as cultural resources, special places and identifying people, groups and organizations that contribute to the area and 2) from the data working up priorities and potential actions for addressing things like displacement and creating long-term solutions that can help residents and communities remain in place.

What has been learned thus far? The obvious:  when growth happens and new development doesn’t keep pace with demand, housing prices go up and renters and home buyers can’t afford to live where they had called home. Buildings are torn down, and large apartment complexes go up in their place with rents double or triple what lessees had been paying before. Obviously when people are forced to move out of their neighborhoods the result can be cultural displacement. Lower income households are often made up of people of color and immigrants and when developers bring in new living spaces mostly only white people can afford to rent or buy. Small minority businesses like salons, bodegas, etc. disappear and multi-national corporations move in, like Starbucks.

The studies here so far have found displacement in SLC is significant and getting worse. That there are no more ‘affordable’ neighborhoods where lower income families can move once displaced. There are still not enough housing units overall, especially those geared for low-income families. Over half of our renter households are spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

The City is learning that there are no magic fixes, no matter what Mayor Mendenhall is touting in her re-election speeches. There are plans to learn from cities like Portland, Oregon’s Rental Services Office that provides training for landlords and tenants to help with resources to have our own type of center by 2024. To advance the priority of helping lower income renters build equity, the City is considering a partnership with Utah’s Perpetual Housing Fund and has proposed investing $10 million to help capitalize their work in support of Salt Lake City renters. I encourage you to at least go to the website and read the 69 page report of what’s happened and what’s planned because this affects ALL of us in the city and state.

 

OP ED

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I haven’t written an Op-Ed piece in years, but after reading Chris Warton’s words in the October 5th City Weekly endorsing his ‘boss’, current Mayor Mendenhall, I feel I have to correct him and point out the flaws in his argument that we should all vote for her. Chris is my representative at City Council and my wife and I have a warm space for him in our hearts. When the day came that gay marriage became legal in Utah, my dear Mormon friend and attorney called me immediately and said “Get down to the County Clerk NOW!”. Despite a winter snowstorm outside, we raced down there with so many other couples, filled out our forms and waited to get married. We were second in line behind Jim Debakis and his former husband, and when it was our turn to pay the fee we were asked “Who married you?”.  Oops, we forgot about that minor detail but heard that a multitude of religious folk and officiants were downstairs waiting to marry anyone needing assistance. There stood Chris in a smart suit and bowtie, and with a few words and an invisible magic wand, POOF! We ran upstairs with our paperwork signed, and the rest is history. Fast forward from 2013 to now and my wife and I are grateful for that day and Chris himself but even more grateful for Rocky Anderson for fighting for our right to be married long before Chris had facial hair.

As our City hall representative in District 3 we generally agree with his voting record about our City and it’s future. I’m not sure he was old enough to vote when Rocky ran for office, but I’d like to point out that if Rocky was such an awful leader, how did he get elected to serve two terms for our city from 2000-2008? Chris points out that during his term he fired many staffers and picked fights with everybody. I applauded his ‘kick-ass’ style as he is a guy who doesn’t stand for laziness or mediocracy in his own life and in the people who work for and around him. Many of those employees could not keep up with the huge amount of work needed to move our city from ‘sleepy town’ to what has become one of the fastest growing cities in America. I served under him as a volunteer Planning and Zoning Commissioner and often listened to his vision and insight that our city was rapidly becoming much more diverse in population and the separation of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ was becoming more and more obvious every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate our current Mayor. I currently serve under her as volunteer Chair of the Historic Landmarks Commission in helping to preserve our precious historic neighborhoods, buildings, etc. We agree that this is something that adds to our local beauty and helps to preserve parts of our historic culture and creativity. I have never sat down and had a conversation between us and I don’t know her other than what we all see or read about her in the news. I give her props for financial management and having a terrific staff, some of whom were hired during Rocky’s term. But, and this is a big one, she is a complete failure when it comes to helping to solve the unsheltered issues we’re facing. I’m afraid she’s been caught in innumerable falsehoods, from the number of people who died on the streets here last winter to the amount of affordable housing units she’s helped to create. Rocky has spent the last few years actually ON the streets, befriending the men and women, the ‘have not’s’ of our city. He’s been there in snow storms and horrible heat not just dropping off water bottles but assisting folks in getting them to the right social services, helping to get an ID at the Fairpark, a job or housing.  Mendenhall’s response to the fast growing numbers of unsheltered is to push them from one block to another. And how this is done is horrific. Random volunteers like my wife collect clothing, food, tents, blankets and such and distribute it to the street people. When the abatements come down, and they come quickly, all of the personal belongings these people have amassed is bulldozed and thrown in dumpsters, leaving them again, with nothing. Those that have jobs and must leave their shelters while they work, come ‘home’ to nothing once a street has been cleared. No one has tallied up the financial cost of these abatements, let alone the human cost.

Last winter here was especially brutally cold. Our Mayor failed to provide an emergency shelter downtown. First United Methodist Church on 203 S. 200 East stepped up and said ‘we’ve got heat, let them come here for shelter’!  Volunteers rallied a wonderful group of folks who worked with the church to be open from dark to morning, providing food, bathrooms, water, and mats to sleep. It was wonderful and saved lives. Rocky was at the church night after night serving coffee and taking the time to get to know the guests. Mendenhall offered no support, but when the cry for help was noticed by the press, she asked the volunteers to also volunteer at a local rec center she was going to open as an emergency shelter, never offering to staff it with her paid employees. Chris Wharton, Mayor Mendenall and other members of the City Council stayed warm and dry in their homes.

We are team Rocky because he will get Sh-t done like he has before and we will all benefit from his passion and experience with the less fortunate in our City. And maybe we’ll see you on the streets this winter serving coffee and offering real assistance, too in your smart suit and bow tie? And for those of you reading, it’s too late to register to vote. PLEASE encourage others who give a Sh-t to get to the polls this Nov. 21st and vote ROCKY!