Update: Court sides with developers in Bluffdale
Score one for developers.
A 3rd District Court judge has sided with two developers and a host of landowners who have asked to de-annex from Bluffdale. And the scope of the decision is massive. The property owners have been authorized to take to Herriman nearly 4,000 acres - 40 percent of Bluffdale.
Judge Anthony Quinn's decision was released Monday morning. In it, the judge says he ruled in favor of the developers not because of a contested Bluffdale zoning decision - but because of the way the city treated a proposed project.
"While justice and equity do not require any specific outcomes from a planning and zoning process, they do require that the planning process be fair, expeditious and consistent," Quinn wrote in his 35-page order.
"The Bluffdale process as applied to South Farm [owned by Sorenson Real Estate] lacks these elements." Quinn evaluated eight other areas that he ruled justified the disconnection.
The land's future was put on the line in a four-day trial that concluded earlier this month. Sorenson Real Estate and Development Associates argued that they worked for years to launch development on their land.
Both developers want to create a mixture of building, such as low- and high-density housing, retail, office and recreation areas.
The land is prime real estate as it comprised Bluffdale's southern edge of rolling foothills.
Quinn's ruling likely isn't the end of the litigation. In the trial's closing arguments, an attorney representing the city vowed to appeal the case if Quinn ruled in favor of the developers.