Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

Plan Ogden “Vision Celebration” attendees give feedback on elements of a new general plan for Ogden City on Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, at Ogden Union Station.

OGDEN — Ogden’s plan for the future is still taking shape, but it’s making good progress.

On Wednesday, several dozen people gathered at Ogden Union Station’s Browning Theater for a Plan Ogden “Vision Celebration” conducted to show interested parties the fruits of two previous visioning sessions held to help the city shape its new general plan.

Wednesday’s event started off with a welcome address from Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski.

“Tonight, we’re here to talk about a vision for our community,” he said. “When you talk about a vision, a vision has a lot of components, different frames, different ways to think about a vision. Tonight, I’m talking about a vision for the built environment.”

He said a general plan, while it may sound mundane, is actually a key component for building a modern community.

“This is the built environment we’re all going to touch, see and experience for a number of years,” he said. “This generational opportunity and this generational plan is going to set the template for the kind of city that we’re going to be, but we are the ones that set the temperature and the tone for what kind of a community we’re going to be. So we have to have a really robust plan and a robust vision for a built environment so that we can all bring our best selves into that built environment and have our own vision that we bring into the buildings, spaces, the open spaces and the infrastructure, etcetera, to create the kind of community we want to be.”

The last general plan was adopted in 2002. The plan currently being formulated will set the tone for and guide the development of transportation, housing, job growth and recreation in Ogden City through 2050.

Following the mayor’s address, consultant Christie Oostema gave a presentation on where the process of formulating the plan is and how far it’s come since last year’s public visioning sessions.

She noted that community participation in forming the new general plan has been significant.

“We have learned a lot from you,” she said. “Thousands of Ogdenites have been involved. We’ve had more than 400 people at large public workshops — both in English and in Spanish — prior to this meeting. We’ve had more than 600 people take a survey. We’ve had over 550 people in targeted outreach events — we went to the high schools, to the Second Baptist Church, to the Rotary, lots of individual meetings to reach out to lots of different groups of people.”

Oostema told the Standard-Examiner the city and other parties involved in crafting the general plan have been hard at work since the last set of workshops in late October.

“In October, residents were asked to evaluate the scenarios and all of the alternatives they helped create,” she said. “We took all of their feedback and developed a set of principles, a ‘Who We Are’ statement and a map that we hope identifies their goals and hopes for Ogden in 2050.”

The presentation included the findings of polling done on various elements such as housing and transportation and renderings of potential development that may one day result from the general plan. Attendees were then invited to give feedback on several posters that will be utilized to further refine the vision.

Oostema said one of the most important elements is the next step in the process.

“From creating this vision for land use, we go right into working hard on general plan drafting,” she said. “All of the feedback we’ve received to date and tonight feeds into that.”

Ogden Planning Manager Barton Brierley told the Standard-Examiner it will likely be early next year before a finalized general plan is adopted.

“It has to get all drafted up and go to the planning commission and city council,” he said. “Those will be next winter.”

Oostema said Wednesday night’s event won’t be the last public gathering held to fine-tune the general plan before it goes before the planning commission and, ultimately, the city council for consideration.

“There’s a lot of engagement opportunities,” she said. “Just like this initial phase, we’ll have very similar kinds of opportunities moving forward.”

Brierley said he expects the next major public event for the general plan will likely be sometime this summer.

For more information, visit plan-ogden.com.