The suit, filed last month in 2nd District Court on behalf of David Carver and the nonprofit Ogden Valley Smart Growth, seeks “judicial review of certain land use regulations/ordinances and related decisions” regarding the proposed development. The plaintiffs argue that following Ogden Valley’s vote to incorporate in November, the county and its commissioners’ rule-making power in the upper valley is constitutionally limited.

“Any exercise of such power which overturns the will of the voters to reform the governance of Ogden Valley as established in that Ballot Initiative, is invalid,” the lawsuit states.

Ogden Valley voters overwhelmingly supported incorporation, casting 2,927 votes in favor and 1,597 against the initiative. As a result, Ogden Valley City officially will become an incorporated area on Jan. 1, 2026, following the election of its new leaders this year. In the meantime, the county retains control, and the lawsuit alleges that bounds are being overstepped.

“While the new municipality is being formed, and not in a position to protect its interests, the Plaintiffs, as citizens of the municipality, are left to seek the Court’s intervention and declaratory relief to prevent the Defendants from effectively nullifying the reforms created by the Ballot Initiative,” the lawsuit reads. “During this time, instead of running free and rampaging over the citizens’ vote to reform the governance of Ogden Valley, Utah’s constitutional guarantees require Weber County to maintain the status quo of zoning regulations and ordinances as a ‘caretaker’ government in service of its citizens and their expressed will.”

At the heart of the matter is the proposed expansion of Nordic Valley, including the addition of roughly 56,000 square feet of commercial building space, 428 condo units, 230 hotel rooms, 159 chalets, 50 employee housing units and more. Commissioners voted unanimously to approve an ordinance adopting the project area plan and budget for the community reinvestment area in December.

Officials from Weber County could not be reached for comment on this story. However, in a previous report by KSL, Commissioner Gage Froerer stated that the commission acted within its authority, citing state law.

“You read state code; it’s pretty clear,” Froerer said, adding that until the new city is formed, the commission “is still the legislative body that makes decisions.”

Carver, meanwhile, told the Standard-Examiner that the county pushing through this kind of development is what inspired Ogden Valley residents to incorporate in the first place.

“The county isn’t listening to even their own planners up here. They don’t listen to any of us,” Carver said. “They’ve never changed anything when we’ve shown up en masse at their chambers. So, we’ve had to resort to lawsuits.”

Carver says Ogden Valley residents aren’t opposed to development altogether. However, he says it must be the right kind of development, appropriately scaled and locally approved.

“There’s plenty of room to do the development that this valley would look forward to. It’s not three- or four-story condos with nightly rentals and just more people. We don’t have any problem with people building nice houses,” Carver said. “We don’t have any problem with development, but it needs to be our decision, not the county’s, because the county doesn’t take into consideration the residents here at all.”

As it stands, he believes that development like the Nordic Valley ski village will create new problems for area residents while compounding existing ones, in addition to fundamentally altering the valley’s rural nature.

“There are two things that are going to be really hard for the developers in Weber County to get around and, for some reason, they think it’s going to be solved by magic,” Carver said. “There isn’t enough water to handle all these people that they’re talking about. Because they’re talking about adding 25,000 to 28,000 more people in this valley when there’s only 7,000 in here now. The other thing, bigger than water even, is there’s no way to get into the valley and to get out of it.”

As it stands, Carver says accessing the valley and contending with traffic locally can be challenging; he believes that proposed development would make the situation untenable.

“The Ogden Canyon is at its full potential. It’s maxed out. They just finished redoing it. It can’t be expanded. And they have an accident every week in there that is serious. The North Ogden Divide is a road that’s unsuitable to be expanded because it’s so poor. And that leaves Trapper’s Loop. Well, Trapper’s Loop, coming in from the Morgan side, that has a huge development already. … So, the people there are going to be using up the road to Trapper’s Loop already.”

It was noted in a January release from the county that the Nordic Village community reinvestment area is the first to be created since the adoption of a policy aiming to “support project areas by offering public infrastructure development assistance through tax increment financing (TIF).”

Tax increment financing is a mechanism by which local government uses tax revenue generated by new development to fund the infrastructure and public improvements needed to support that development.

Said Stephanie Russell — the county’s economic development director — in the release: “The Nordic Village project is an excellent example of how TIF can promote long-term economic and environmental sustainability through strategic development practices.”