One of the main projects the City Council focused on during the Jan. 7, 2025, meeting was the public hearing of the Zone Change, Schematic Subdivision Plan, and Development Agreement for the Farmstead Subdivision, with the goal of settling upon a plan for lot sizes that will benefit both current and future residents in the area and the city as a whole. 

The Farmstead Subdivision is the plot of land at approximately 675 South 1525 West, Farmington, which currently has AA and A zoning. During the City Council meeting, presenter Lyle Gibson, assistant director of Farmington’s Community Development Department, explained that AA and A zoned land typically has lot sizes of 10 and two acres, respectively. 

“So, they are very large lots, heavy agriculture-type farming, so it’s not really, as it’s zoned, set up for development. The general plan, however, calls for AE [zoning] to match, essentially, the rest of West Farmington.” 

In contrast to AA and A zoning, Gibson described, AE zoning has a conventional lot size of one acre, and there is a possibility of dividing the land into even smaller residential-sized plots, depending on the specifics of the agreement between the developer and the city. 

Providing a brief history of why an AE zoning might allow for this kind of lot density, Gibson described how AE zoning used to allow for two lots to go on every acre of land, but the city “reeled that back several decades ago” to preserve the open space available in Farmington. 

Recently, however, the city has begun approving higher lot density on AE-zoned land again, with the agreement that the developers in turn support Farmington’s Open Space Initiative. This trade-off essentially balances out the tighter-density residential areas by allowing the city to allocate more open land than usual in other areas and to use that land to build trails, parks, and other community spaces. 

The Farmstead Subdivision’s developer, C.W. Group, has been working with the city to find a suitable plan and is currently proposing to purchase up to 17 Transfer of Development Rights Lots. These TDRs would call for an average of .27 acres for each lot in the subdivision, a more comparable size to other residential areas in West Farmington. 

“Essentially, [a TBR] gives developers the opportunity to purchase lots that could have been developed somewhere else within the community, and we put them in this project,” Gibson said. “And how it works in Farmington, is our Parks system has taken over, in the past, subdivisions that could have been developed and turned into lots. So now we have this bank of “lots that could have been” and we have the ability to transfer those elsewhere, and the funds used to purchase those lots from the city are those rights, and they move back into our parks system.” 

In other words, the current development plan would support Farmington’s Open Space Initiatives both because of the parameters of its zoning, and because the specific TBRs agreement would require the developers to further invest back into the parks system.

As the public hearing commenced, several representatives for the current community near the new Farmstead Subdivision acknowledged these potential benefits of the plan, and also raised concerns with its specifics. 

One of the primary issues brought to the table is the consideration that although the higher-density lot sizes proposed would be comparable to some areas in West Farmington, those areas are much farther north from the Farmstead subdivision, while the community immediately adjacent remains largely a ranching community. 

As a result, the current consensus is that the residents living near the new Farmstead development are not opposed to an increase in lot density but believe that the TBR plan will not be the most suitable for benefiting the subdivision specifically, as it primarily funds the larger-scale parks beyond their immediate community, and would undermine the investment current residents have made on their land. 

Consequently, the City Council motioned to table the current plan, with a recommendation to the developer to refine the plan for a balance that both provides support to open space initiatives for the city as a whole and maximizes the benefit to the West Farmington community specifically.