The I-15 expansion that is scheduled to begin construction in 2026 is going to significantly affect the east side frontage road, Community Park, particularly its parking, and some nearby homes, City Engineer Kevin Campbell told the city council at a Nov. 6 work session.

“In essence, that west shoulder will go away,” he said. “Our park strip in the park along the west side of the parking lot will go away. You'll basically have a sidewalk right up against the west end of the parking lot without a planter strip. That's the current alignment.”

With the realignment of the frontage road on the west side of the park, parking along that road will be eliminated, he said. “It’ll be very tight along that west side. Our frontage road will front right up against that future widening.”

“A good alignment is to think of the park parking lot and the west line of that park parking lot and extend it north, that’s a pretty good visualization of where that new sidewalk will be. And again, they might have to take more property so they can get some slope through the basin, but it probably won’t be bringing the road any closer to the people’s homes,” Campbell said.

Although UDOT has released its Environmental Impact Statement for the area, it has only outlined its plans in broad strokes, he said. It’s possible that the project will take three to six homes north of McDonald’s on the east side of the street.

“When I asked pretty specifically about those five or six homes, they were pretty direct that they did not know because they had not done any surveying or right of way analysis yet,” he said. “I think there was a plan that looked like maybe they wouldn't take them, but they never did promise anything.” 

Some homes in the Fox Bridge subdivision may also lose part of their backyards. Also, since Community Park was developed with federal funds UDOT must replace the property it takes. 

“There's been some talks of UDOT acquiring that [Fox Bridge property adjacent to the park] in some of that wetland to the north and mitigating some of that wetland and converting some of that to parking, and maybe the knuckle [in the parking lot] goes away then,” Campbell said. “We kind of said, ‘Hey, why don't you look at the wetlands to the north, the back of these people’s yards? It’s, for the most part, fairly unused.’ If they could mitigate that landfill that would be a nice area for some parking expansion.”

“So that’s an area that we’ve kind of pointed them towards that is attached to the park or adjacent to the park,” he said. “That’s an area that they’re taking a look at, but they wouldn’t come in and say, ‘Oh, let’s build you something within your existing park property.’ They have to look, and they have to find other property to replace that that they’re taking.”

Current plans call for a parking lot expansion of 60 to 65 stalls at the heavily used Community Park.

“One of the concerns is that we’d be losing the overflow parking along the west,” Campbell said. “The thought was we want to try to construct additional parking during the construction of the pickleball courts and so that’s a concept plan that we’ve put together.”

Campbell would like to have the new parking stalls go out to bid this winter with construction to take place in the spring. The engineering estimate says the project should cost in the neighborhood of $365,000.