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Vineyard: Utah's small town with a BIG FUTURE

Developer turning old Geneva Steel site's industrial past into expansive future.


Salt Lake Tribune, 28 September 2014

Article Summary:

Megaplex Theater:

  • first IMAX screen in Utah County


@geneva Development:

  • Vineyard expected to increase from about 465 residents to as many as 27,000 in less than a decade
  • "a shortage of developable land and booming real-estate markets drive one of the most ambitious projects seen in Utah County"
  • a town center rivaling those in nearby Orem and Provo
  • a Utah Valley University satellite campus
  • a transit hub centered on FrontRunner and, perhaps, TRAX
  • three Interstate 15 interchanges
  • nine stoplights


Geneva Steel:

  • 1,700-arcle site
  • one of the largest U.S. brownfields west of the Mississippi River
  • built by U. S. government for World War II
  • factory located inland to lessen chance of Japanese air strike
  • six decades of mill operations
  • known for "air pollution that once belched from the mill and clung to the sky"
  • Anderson Development acquired site for $46.8 million in 2005 bankruptcy proceedings
  • polluted areas — about 140 waste-management units
  • contamination from volatile organics, heavy metals, petroleum byproducts, and other potentially health-threatening compounds
  • seven years spent moving tainted soil, slag, building waste, scrap metal, and other mill remnants
    estimate of total volume of concrete increased from 150,000 to 2,100,000 cubic yards