Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
OREM — The Orem mayor and Orem City Council broke ground Tuesday evening on a new city center.
The groundbreaking happened almost exactly 54 years after the original city center was built in 1969. The new Orem City Center will be located south of the current city hall building at 56 N. State Street.
"Due to many years of saving and some prudent financial decisions, this project is being built with no new taxes and no new debt, which is incredibly rare for this type of project," the City Council said on Facebook.
The council made the decision to build a new city center unanimously in 2022. The city said a seismic evaluation discovered the current city center would not withstand a moderate earthquake, but the new building will be made seismically safe and will serve as the city's emergency operation center in case of a natural disaster.
"We are excited for this new addition to the city and will (post) updates as construction gets underway," city leaders said in the post.
The City Council said residents expressed concern about trees that were removed to make room for the new building. "However, we're happy to report that for every tree that was removed or transplanted, we will be replacing them with 1.5x the number of trees," the council said.
Orem has been honored as a "Tree City" by the Arbor Day Foundation for almost 30 years straight and the city is "committed to making new trees a priority at this site."
Mayor David Young, in his address at the groundbreaking, said the traditional Christmas lights display will continue to be a priority in the future of Orem even as the new city center is built.
