Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

CLEARFIELD — A project to build livable and workable space adjacent the Clearfield FrontRunner station is starting to rise out of the ground.

On Tuesday, officials and media were invited to Clearfield Station to tour the progress on the 57-acre joint Clearfield City-Utah Transit Authority mixed-use project.

Mayor Mark Shepherd said the city took a unique approach to helping develop Clearfield Station.

“Instead of waiting on tax increment to come in from the CRA (community reinvestment area) that’s in place, we decided instead to bond against that tax increment and finish all of the horizontal infrastructure — all of our roads, the park is finally done — and it is now ready for development to happen,” he said. “Now we just need our development team to kick it into gear and start seeing things go vertical.”

Roadways and below-ground infrastructure at the site have been completed along with the new 2.25-acre Tower Park, named after the airport-themed play structure that serves as the park’s centerpiece. The park also includes four pavilions and a public restroom.

Photo supplied, Clearfield City

Plans for the development include:

• Two mixed-use residential buildings with corner and ground-floor retail spaces. The residential buildings would include 213 housing units ranging from one- to three-bedroom apartments. The residential spaces would include bike storage, a bike wash, a clubhouse, a dog park, a dog wash, a fitness center, a pool, rooftop decks and “Zoom rooms” for private video-conferencing space.
• A 1-acre public plaza.
• Retail space measuring 14,000 square feet surrounding the public plaza. The anchor commercial tenant has been announced to be the Front Climbing Club, a gym taking up 37,500 square feet.

“We really have envisioned this as a centerpiece for us as a city and for UTA to be able to look at this as what a TOD (transit-oriented development) should look like,” Shepherd said. “When we talk about transit-oriented developments, there are some that are walkable and some that aren’t, and this has been laid out as such. … It can be walkable.”

Shepherd said Clearfield is ahead of other similar developments.

“This takes a lot of work to get done and get to this point,” he said. “If you drive around, you can see the other station area lands that are just now starting to come online. They really are just dirt gathered around the train station. It’s nice to see roads in.”

Beth Holbrook, board trustee for UTA representing Davis, Weber and Box Elder counties, told the Standard-Examiner she anticipates the project coming to life over the next three to five years, depending on the market.

“This (TOD) is one of the largest ones that UTA had the most land in,” she said. “It’s one of the key ones for us because of the location. … We wanted to make sure we were using our land as effectively and efficiently as possible, and that usually includes density — a lot of housing, a lot of strategic connections.”