Category Archives: West Side

Pedal in the City: Jordan Parkway Trail Finished!

A long awaited dream for Fairpark residents and bike enthusiasts all over the city has come true. Residents can now cycle the entire Jordan Parkway Trail without skirting around side streets between sections of trail. The Jordan River Trail Bridge was officially opened and dedicated at celebration event on November 18 at Fisher Mansion. This bridge completes Jordan River Trail, an urban paved trail that follows the Jordan River through Salt Lake City from Davis County through Utah County.

Speaking at the dedication ceremony included David Litvak,SLC Mayor’s office, Ben McAdams, Salt Lake County Mayor, James Rogers, Salt Lake City Council District 1, Stan Penfold, Salt Lake City Council District 3, Rep. Sandra Hollins, District 23, and Kyle Lamalfa, former District 2 City Council Member, who was instrumental in moving forward the completion of the Jordan River Parkway Trail.

More information is available at the Jordan River Commission (http://jordanrivercommission.com/) and the Salt Lake City (http://www.slcgov.com).

Get your Garden on with Fairpark Community’s First Annual Plant Sale!

Got Garden?

We have just what you need to fill it up!

After months of hard work by volunteers, the Fairpark Community Council’s First Annual Plant Sale is almost here! Almost 4,000 veggies and herb plants are being cared for by dedicated volunteers. The seedlings are growing like wild and will be sure to enhance any garden in our neighborhood with culinary delights.

Read more here (http://fairparkcommunity.org/?p=814) about how to pre-order your plants and pick them up as early as the end of April, and view full catalogs of the availalbe varieties of vegetables and herbs, as well as a full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away at the May 14 event.

How did this all start?

The FCC Board decided to take advantage of the Salt Lake City annual Signature Event Fund application in fall of 2015. The FCC Board decided that a fun event would be a plant sale and education event. The scope of events that happened after that was amazing!

A donation of a structure that looks very much like a bus shelter was timely. Volunteers dismantled the structure over a weekend in late February and the following weekend rebuilt it at All Chay restaurant (1264 W 500 N), the proprietors of which graciously donated space for the project. The next 6 weeks were busy with fine tuning the structure with materials to make it a functioning greenhouse, planting seeds, separating seedlings, watering the plants and generating interest in our community for the project. Tom King, project lead, appeared on KRCL Radio’s Punk Rock Farmer show on April 15 to discuss and promote the project.

The next few weeks will be spent continuing the care of the plants, advertising and promoting the event, taking pre-orders with the culminating plant sale event at Northwest Community Center, Saturday, May 14 at 10am.

As a special incentive to get people to attend the May 14 event, we will be offering free seeds for lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and more! There will fun be activities for kids of all ages.

View the full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away here.

Left over plants from the May 14 event will be taken to the Get Into the River Festival from 5-7pm, at the Fairpark Amphitheater, 155 North 1000 West.

We are very excited about this community building/enhancing project. We hope residents will become more interested in growing their own food, sharing their stories about gardening, sharing samples of their edibles, and develop sustainable habits that will improve health and lifestyles for years to come.

Garden on dude!

Affordable Housing Development at 750 W. South Temple

A representative of the Vecino Group will attend the next community council
meeting (April 28, 6:30, Northwest Community Center, 1255 Clark Ave) to talk about their project at 750 W. South Temple (just outside our border in Poplar Grove) and answer questions of those in attendance may have. This visit is for informational purposes only as this development has passed the form based
zoning for the City and the City Council voted 4-3 to allow Salt Lake County Housing
Authority to build this structure in Salt Lake City.

The project planned is called Bodhi and will be a five-story building
including 80 units of one and two-bedroom apartments. 60 of the 80 units will be
held for those making 50% or less of the Area Median Income (AMI). 50% of the
area median income for Salt Lake County is $36,100 for a family of 4. Of those 60
units, there will be 5 set aside for the chronically homeless, 9 units for the severely
and persistently mentally ill, and 9 units for those with a long-term mobility
disability. There will be full-time onsite services provided by the Salt Lake
Community Action Program.

This $12 million development is a partnership between the Vecino Group
and the Salt Lake County Housing Authority, and is being funded by Federal Low
Income Housing Tax Credits and $1 million from the Olene Walker Housing Trust
The Fairpark Community Council Executive Committee has been meeting
with stakeholders ever since we first heard about this development. Though we
welcome the higher densities that the Transit Station Area zoning provides along
the TRAX line, we are worried by the concentration of affordable units in this
development and along the TRAX corridor, and will continue to work with our city
council members to ensure that further developments along North Temple do not
have such a high proportion of affordable units.

Zoning Terms Primer

There is a lot of discussion about zoning, but what does it all mean?

Housing terms are often referred to in our discussions and presentations about housing: Affordable housing, Subsidized housing and Market rate housing. Here you can learn about things such as what “cost burdened” means, the percentage of Salt Lake residents who are cost burdened, how vouchers work, and what market value is.

Affordable housing: Families who pay more than 30 percent of their incomes for housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, transportation and medical care. An estimated 12 million renter and homeowner households now pay more than 50 percent of their annual incomes for housing. A family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford local fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the US. In Salt Lake City, 50% of our renters are cost burdened and 25% of our renters are severely cost burdened (meaning they pay more than 50% of their income on rent).

Continue reading →

West Side Spotlight: State Representative Sandra Hollins

Representative Sandra Hollins, D-District 23

Fairpark Gazette: Thank you so much for sitting down to visit with The Gazette! What would you like to tell the residents of Fairpark?

Rep. Sandra Hollins: First, thank you for having me! Well, let’s start by talking about voting. I just want west side residents to know that this is a very important election and I want them to come out and vote because their vote equates to their voice. I saw it in the mayor’s election and I want to make sure they show up for this election as well. I was so proud during our caucus night. I was very proud to see the lines and the amount of people who came out for caucus night, and so I want make sure those same people come out to vote. I want to make sure that those who aren’t registered to vote get registered and that their voices are heard. We could really turn this state people! There are so many democrats and if you count all the democrats who think their voices don’t matter, and they get together, you find it DOES matter. When I’m out campaigning, I hear of so many people who say, “I don’t vote because I don’t think it will make a difference, and it does make a difference. It makes a HUGE difference!” One of my concerns is the number of young people who have no interest in voting, but I noticed in the last caucus night the number of young people who are excited about this presidential race and who are out and interested in politics, which gets me very excited about politics. I met a number of young people who have never voted before who said this was their first time participating in the political process. I met a young man who was a refugee and he got his citizenship last year. That this was his first time to vote. And not only did he register to vote, but he became a delegate! He came and sat by me and we talked and talked. He had a lot questions about the process and what needs to be done, and who’s running… He was just so curious. He just jumped in with both feet! I loved that.

FG: We just made it through the legislative session. We didn’t have a lot of wins, but one of the things we were happy about was the Fairpark Bill coming out.

Visit Representative Hollins Legislative website here.

Continue reading →

Education Corner: Charter Schools in West Salt Lake City

The charter school movement in Utah is 15 years old and continuing to grow. There are now over 100 public charter schools in Utah, with more than a dozen opening the next two years. The State Office of Education has a charter school department and there are two charter school associations that exist to support charter schools. Read all about charter schools in Utah here.

There are two non-profit organizations that support charter schools by providing technical assistance, advocacy, events and numerous resources to members:

The Utah Association of Public Charter Schools

The Utah Charter Network

Salt Lake City has several charter schools within its city boundaries, some which are on the west side of the city. Continue reading →