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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's capital city imagined a future of new "world-class" recreational trails in the foothills above the city when City Council members approved a new master plan in 2020.
It was March 3, 2020, and nobody on the council — or anyone in the city for that matter — could have imagined how important the foothills would soon become. Within days, Utah would confirm its first case of COVID-19 and pandemic-related shutdowns began a week later.
Utahns ultimately flocked to parks, trails and other outdoor spaces in record numbers as they offered ways to recreate away from crowds. However, the trail additions — adding over 15 miles of new trails to the system — didn't go quite as planned.
The city paused the program in May 2021 amid trail slide-offs and other erosion-related issues that emerged with the first phase of trails near City Creek Canyon. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall announced months later that it would remain on pause until at least mid-2022, while the city reviewed the issues.
The plan remained in limbo ever since, but that could soon change.
Salt Lake City Department of Parks and Public Lands officials say they have completely reworked the master plan system and changed the way that new trails will be considered as they inch closer to resuming the ambitious project.
"I certainly think we're much closer to that now," said Tyler Murduck, deputy director of the Salt Lake City Public Lands.
It comes months after the department released an evaluation report earlier this year, which outlined issues that likely led to the issues trail users reported.
Where everything went wrong
Residents quickly sounded the alarm after the first phase of new trails opened. In a City Council meeting three years ago, one resident said he was "disturbed and saddened" by the outcome of the new trails which he said were placed in poor terrain.
Independent consultants essentially agreed in their evaluation report.
The report found that while the city included a "significant amount of community input," it could improve the way it develops trails in areas where "overly steep terrain and challenging soils."It also found that "inefficient planning led to "poor construction quality" and other issues.
Murdock said it was clear that the original plan offered more conceptual ideas and wasn't detailed enough to make sure that alignments were in the right spot.
"I think that ultimately led us to build sections of trails that maybe had more visual impacts, maybe more ecological impacts because we weren't able to look at the alignment and what adjustments were needed to improve that," he told KSL.com.
The report also found that there was a lack of education surrounding decommissioned trails, which are trails removed to repair vegetation or other issues. It recommended that the city plan out trails through different zones and prioritize maintenance of existing trails among the ways it could improve its program.
Department officials responded last year by hiring trails and vegetation maintenance positions, as well as recreation ecologists, creating dedicated staff who specialize in areas where the first plan fell short, Murduck said.
He added that there were some restoration projects over the past few years to fix over two miles of the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, the largest trail in the area.
The department is now looking at the expansion that has been on hold since 2021 with lessons from the first phase now implemented in the planning process.
Masterplan 2.0
Department officials provided Salt Lake leaders an update on the progress during a meeting last month. There, they noted that new efforts center around seven new zones in the foothills, as well as a slower and more detailed approach to new construction.
This change, Murdock says, should make it easy for public lands officials to handle the large task of managing some 6,000 acres of foothills within city limits.
The city will also determine how many trails will exist in each zone after all seven zones are fully analyzed. It differs from the first plan which outlined a goal to build 85-100 miles of new trails in the foothills without reviewing each area individually, Tyler Fonarow, recreational trails program manager for the Salt Lake City Public Lands, told city leaders in the meeting.
"This is a key shift in thinking from planning based on trails to planning based on open space area," he said.
However, nearly all future trail expansions would require agreements with outside landowners, including the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, U.S. Forest Service, University of Utah, and Utah Division of State Parks.
That's why public lands officials plan to seek out those agreements before moving forward with future trails. Murdock said this would have happened even without the paused, adding that he believes an agreement could be made by this winter. It would lead to a multiagency management agreement outlining how the city oversees trails and addresses conservation, preservation and recreation goals.
It would also ensure that the rules remain the same when people are biking or hiking on a trail, especially since routes can go through different jurisdictions without anyone ever noticing.
"The goal would be that we don't have to change rules and regulations every time they cross a property line because ... that just doesn't make any common sense," Fonarow said.
It's still unclear when trail expansion will resume, but the Salt Lake City Council agreed to ensure funds are available for the department to reach a development agreement and to plan out future trails.
Trail construction funds will remain locked until the right agreements are in place, but public lands officials say they remain confident trail expansion could resume as early as the end of 2025.
