Our Case Against the Rezone: Five Facts That Unravel a Developer's Gamble
It’s a familiar story: a developer buys a parcel of land, proposes a high-density project, and the surrounding neighborhood rises up. But here in Riverton, the fight we're in is different. On the surface, it’s 15 townhomes on a corner lot in our community of single-family homes. A closer look, however, reveals a series of surprising and counter-intuitive facts buried in the developer's own proposal and our city's municipal code.
What we discovered has empowered us to challenge this project not with emotion, but with a formidable, fact-based argument. We found that the developer is asking our city to ignore its own rules, that their traffic data contains its own undoing, and that a powerful legal precedent is on our side. These five facts show how a developer's plan unravels when a community does its homework.
Takeaway #1: A 'Downtown' Development... That's 27% Too Small and a Mile from Downtown
The developer, Moore Homes, is requesting that their 1.45-acre parcel be rezoned to RM-14-D, a high-density designation. The critical detail we found is the "-D" suffix. According to Riverton City Code, this designation is explicitly and geographically restricted to the "Riverton City Downtown area" located around 12600 South and Redwood Road.
The proposed project, however, is at 13200 South and Redwood Road—a full mile outside the actual downtown. This isn't a minor discrepancy; it's a fundamental procedural violation. But the request is even more audacious. The RM-14-D zone requires a minimum parcel size of two acres. The developer’s parcel is only 1.45 acres, making it 27.5% too small for the very zone they are requesting. The developer is not only asking the city to pretend the property is somewhere it isn't, but also to ignore the zone's most basic dimensional standards.
For us, this is the most egregious policy violation. It renders geographically-specific zoning meaningless. The applicant is asking for a "downtown" designation on a residential-estate corner, and we believe that's a request our city must deny.
Takeaway #2: The Traffic Memo That Proved a Bigger Study Was Needed
To downplay traffic concerns, the developer submitted a three-page "Traffic Memo" claiming the project's 100 new daily vehicle trips would be a minimal increase. From our policy perspective, the memo is a masterclass in self-incrimination.
First, the memo’s own calculation of a "6% increase in traffic" on the adjacent street triggers Riverton City Code 18.215.080(A), which allows the city to require a full, comprehensive Traffic Impact Study (TIS) for any project generating trips "in excess of five percent of the existing volume." The developer's own evidence officially justifies a more rigorous study, which has not been provided.
Second, the memo’s claim of a "minimal" impact is statistically deceptive. The correct comparison isn't to the 1,500 cars already on the street, but to what is allowed on the parcel by-right. Under current RR-22 zoning, the parcel would support 2-3 homes generating 20-30 daily trips. The proposed 100 trips represent a 300% to 500% increase in traffic impact over what our city's General Plan allows. From our planning perspective, the memo is also notable for what it omits: there is zero analysis of the critical 13200 S & Redwood Road intersection and it relies on generalized "model data" instead of actual peak-hour traffic counts, rendering its conclusions unreliable.
As one of our neighbors put it, "It is already so hard to get out onto Redwood Rd as it is. We do not need [more traffic]."
Takeaway #3: The "Housing Shortage" Argument vs. The 700 Unbuilt Units
A common justification we all hear for controversial developments is the urgent need to address a regional housing crisis. The argument is simple: any new housing is good housing. However, we found official data from within Riverton City itself that dismantles this narrative.
According to a June 2025 message from Riverton Councilmember Troy McDougal, the city has 3,100 housing units that have already been approved but remain unbuilt. This figure includes "over 700... specifically approved multi-family units." This single data point shifts the conversation entirely. The problem in Riverton isn't a lack of approved housing supply; it's that developers are not building the projects they already have permission for. This suggests that approving another high-density project, especially one that violates numerous city codes, does little to solve a housing problem and may instead serve a different economic motive.
This supports what many of us have argued: "[The] 'Truth of Density' is that developers 'stockpile more units to slowly bring to market, maintaining higher prices'."
Takeaway #4: The Supreme Court Has Already Weighed In on a Case Like This
Opponents of development like us are often dismissed as NIMBYs whose concerns about "neighborhood character" lack legal standing. But in this case, we found a Utah Supreme Court decision that provides a powerful legal foundation for our position.
The case, Petersen v. Riverton (2010), involved a developer seeking to rezone a property from RR-22—the exact same zone as the current proposal. The Riverton City Council denied the rezone, citing resident opposition and a desire to maintain the area's "rural character." The developer sued, but the state's highest court upheld the city's denial. This precedent establishes that "protecting existing neighborhood character"—exactly what we are fighting for—is a legitimate, legally defensible legislative goal.
What makes the precedent even more potent is the scale. The rezone denied in the Petersen case was for a far smaller density increase to roughly 3 units per acre. The current proposal seeks a density of 10.3 units per acre. If the city was on firm legal ground denying a minor density increase, it is on even stronger legal ground denying this far more extreme proposal
Takeaway #5: This Isn't a Housing Project, It's a Speculator's Gamble
Synthesizing these facts, we at Riverton United argue that this proposal is not a good-faith effort to build housing but a speculative investment. Our argument is grounded in the property's history: the applicants purchased "excess UDOT parcels," leftover land from a road expansion project. They bought this land with "full knowledge of the current General Plan and the corresponding current zoning."
They did not buy land zoned for townhomes; they bought leftover, awkwardly shaped land zoned for low-density estates and are now betting they can pressure our city into a lucrative zoning change. The request to apply a "downtown" zone a mile from downtown, on a parcel that is 27.5% too small, is not a reasonable development plan. It is a gamble for private profit at the expense of public planning and our neighborhood's stability.
As we argued in our formal objection, "[This is] speculation that they can exert sufficient pressure on Riverton City representatives... to affect a zoning change that would yield these speculators significant profits at the expense of the integrity of our neighborhoods."
Conclusion: Our Masterclass in Civic Diligence
This fight is a case study in how a community armed with facts can systematically dismantle a development proposal that runs counter to established policy. We built an unassailable argument by exposing the project's failures on every possible front. We revealed a fundamental procedural violation in the misapplication of a "downtown" zone; a technical self-own in a traffic memo that triggered the need for a more comprehensive study; an economic refutation using the city's own data on unbuilt housing; a solid legal backstop from a Supreme Court precedent; and finally, a clear motivational exposure of a speculator's gamble.
Our work demonstrates that when a plan is at odds with a city's own rules, the most powerful arguments against it often come from the developer's own application and the city's own law books.
How many development battles in other communities might turn out differently if residents knew exactly where to look for the facts? That's why we're here.
