On Tuesday, during a meeting of the Ogden City Redevelopment Agency, the board voted 5-0 to move forward with a $2.2 million purchase of the property from the Weber Housing Authority. Plans had been to turn the property into a permanent supportive housing project, but those came to a halt in January when the City Council opted to explore other location options.

During his presentation at Tuesday’s meeting, Ogden Community Development Manager Jeremy Smith said the purchase will help the city implement infill housing as part of its Quality Neighborhood Initiative.

“The city has invested a lot of resources into this neighborhood and it’s really turning around,” he said. “A lot of improvements have occurred there. It still has a long way to go. We look at the location — it’s a great candidate for that. It is similar to the other projects where it has a fully-depreciated structure on it.”

He said infill housing would help in continuing to revitalize the neighborhood and promote home ownership.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Council Member Angela Choberka recused herself from the vote due to her living in proximity to and her property value benefiting from past work of the Quality Neighborhood Initiative.

Before stepping away for the final vote, she took some time to explain that she favored the WHA project moving ahead as planned.

“I supported the Weber Housing Authority because it was developed by experts in serving this particular population — who I’ve worked very closely with over the years,” she said. “This population is the mentally or physically disabled that are living unhoused or have a challenge becoming stably housed.”

Choberka added that denying the WHA’s original intentions doesn’t mean the problem of chronic homelessness fades away.

“Because we’re not supporting the new project, those folks will continue to live in a scattered-site model in East Central — in my neighborhood,” she said. “Until a new location is found, this problem will continue because there is nowhere else in the county to house them, which is a shame.”

Weber Housing Authority Executive Director Andi Beadles told the Standard-Examiner on Wednesday that it was an unfortunate end to their efforts with the former Aspen Care Center property, but the WHA is hopeful moving forward.

“We do feel sad,” she said. “Obviously, we had hoped that this would be the location for our permanent supportive housing project, but we’re optimistic that we can find another site and we look forward to moving forward and finding something for the chronically homeless/disabled population.”

She said the organization is hoping to identify a location within Weber County that will meet the needs of residents and case managers that will be providing services.

“We haven’t started looking,” she said. “Most of our time has been spent trying to find solutions at the Aspen facility, but hopefully in the near future, we can start looking for alternate sites.”

Council Vice Chair Richard Hyer said, ultimately, the city and WHA both want the same thing.

“This is a project that was fraught with issues from the beginning and got more complicated as it went along,” he said. “I believe we all have the same basic intent. None of us want to do harm to those who are less fortunate, so we’ll lock arms and plow forward and do the best that we can.”

Beadles said she’s thankful for all of the support the project and WHA have received throughout the process.

“We weren’t anticipating the level of support that we received for the project,” she said. “It was really heartwarming and beautiful, so just thank you to everybody for your commitment to making this county such a great place.”