Midland Square was decked out with pumpkins for the last Tremonton Farmers Market event of the year on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2023. The success of the Farmer’s Market is one of the reasons city officials have been working toward a project to make improvements at the public plaza.
A memorial to fallen military service members at Midland Square in Tremonton was dedicated in 2001. After many residents expressed frustration that a plan to make improvements at Midland Square has gone forward without input from veterans, the city has decided to revisit its plans for the public plaza.
Midland Square was decked out with pumpkins for the last Tremonton Farmers Market event of the year on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2023. The success of the Farmer’s Market is one of the reasons city officials have been working toward a project to make improvements at the public plaza.
Leader/Jeff DeMoss
A memorial to fallen military service members at Midland Square in Tremonton was dedicated in 2001. After many residents expressed frustration that a plan to make improvements at Midland Square has gone forward without input from veterans, the city has decided to revisit its plans for the public plaza.
After receiving considerable backlash over a perceived lack of public notice and failure to include military veterans in the process, Tremonton officials are taking a step back on plans to renovate and make improvements at Midland Square.
At its March 19 meeting, the Tremonton City Council voted unanimously to repeal a resolution it approved in January. The resolution adopted a final concept plan for the project at the public plaza located on Main Street, including construction of a permanent stage area for live music and other performance arts, power pedestals for vendors at events like the farmer’s market, restrooms, and landscaping changes.
“We’re going back to the drawing board,” Mayor Lyle Holmgren said.
In late 2022, Tremonton applied for and was awarded more than $400,000 through the Rural Communities Opportunity Grant, one of several grant programs administered by the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity. The grant requires a 30% match from the city, which equates to about $120,000 and will come from city redevelopment agency funds earmarked for Main Street improvements.
In October last year, the city hired an urban design firm to help it come up with a concept plan, which the council approved on Jan. 2.
As word of the project and approval of the plan spread through the community, some have raised concerns about potential impacts on the veterans memorial located at the southwest corner of the park. City officials have always maintained that the memorial would not be impacted, but many local veterans and other residents have expressed frustration that the monument was not mentioned in the grant application, and feel they have been left out of the process.
About a dozen local residents spoke during a public hearing at the March 19 meeting, most of them encouraging the council to repeal the current project plan.
“Midland Square came about through war veterans,” Kristi Bowcutt said. “The city will not be leaving room for veterans to expand with what they have going on right now.”
Jamie Poppleton urged the council to amend the plans to give veterans and residents a say in how the grant money is used.
“This should have, in my opinion, been handled differently,” Poppleton said. “I believe the veterans deserve some or most of the grant money to construct a beautiful centerpiece for our city.”
Not everyone who spoke at the meeting was in favor of ditching the original concept plan.
Sara Mohrman, the city’s Main Street manager and one of the key players in securing the grant and advancing the project, said it’s important to move forward with the project in a timely manner to advance the city’s goals of economic revitalization in the area.
“The downtown businesses have been anticipating this project for quite sometime now,” Mohrman said.
“It frustrates me that the city council is considering postponing the renovation of Midland Square,” said Scott Mohrman, who is Sara’s husband. “To many of us it looks like they are catering to the loud, angry minority rather than the entire community.”
Sara said she and Scott have endured numerous verbal attacks from opponents of the plan. She owns a business across the street from Midland Square, and said some have claimed she has been working to advance the project for personal gain, “spreading lies about us while insinuating this project has been done solely to prop up myself and my business, which can’t be further from the truth.
“I could close my business tomorrow and I would still fight hard for the completion of this project, as I understand firsthand its importance,” she said.
Later in the meeting, the council voted unanimously to repeal the concept plan.
“I think all we’re doing here is just stepping back a little bit, and then moving forward,” Council Member Bret Rohde said.
Holmgren said a committee has been organized to come up with new plans, “a citizen committee made up of a pretty good cross section of individuals, members of our community. So we’ll just start working on that.”
Regardless of the what the new plans look like, he said the conditions of the grant require that it contain some kind of economic development component.
“This from the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity so there’s an economic realm to this grant,” he said. “We can’t just decide that we’re going to beautify some part of downtown. It has to have an economic purpose.”
Council members expressed appreciation that there is now a committee that will give residents more weight in how a new plan is developed.
I enjoy the opportunity to hear from more of the community,” Council Member Jeff Hoedt said. “Putting together a committee that can represent the different interests I think is an excellent idea, and will help us to make a more informed decision.”
Rohde said the council should consider forming citizen committees as a regular part of the process whenever a new project comes along that will have a significant impact on the city, and work harder to inform and engage the public before making final decisions.
“I think we need to develop more of a standard, that this becomes the norm for certain projects, and that we involve the community a little bit earlier on certain projects,” he said.
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