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Coalville will wait for a state ombudsman’s decision about Wohali’s nightly rentals before final decision on development

The Coalville City Council announced at a public hearing Monday it would await an opinion from a state property rights ombudsman before voting on the Wohali development application.
Alexander Cramer/Park Record

A socially distanced public hearing took place in Coalville Monday night where officials and residents discussed the application for a large golf course community on the city’s west side.

The proposal, from Wohali Partners LLC, has been before the city in one form or another since November 2017, and the City Council took no action Monday. Officials said they would wait for a state property rights authority to weigh in on an aspect of the plan before making a final decision, likely in coming weeks.

Public sentiment has been vocally opposed to the development in the years since the city annexed the land, but a majority of the two dozen speakers on Monday were in favor of the project, with many saying the property owners had a right to develop it as they wished.



The city approved a proposal for 570 homes and 130 nightly rentals in December, but the developers withdrew that application after a local citizen group organized a referendum to put the issues on the ballot.

The new proposal calls for 125 single-family homes and 303 nightly rental units. The developer claims the nightly rentals, which are not counted against the project’s density, would support the golf course resort. A portion of the nightly rentals would be rooms in a lodge while others would be in standalone cabins dotted along the property.



The city’s code allows a golf course in that land’s zoning, as well as that number of housing units, but the code is silent on how many or what kind of nightly rental units would be allowed.

The citizen group took the issue to a state property rights ombudsman and Coalville Mayor Trever Johnson said the city would wait until the ombudsman renders an opinion before the City Council decides the issue.

There is an Aug. 22 deadline for a decision imposed by the developers, but they indicated they would be willing to extend the deadline to allow for the ombudsman’s decision if necessary.

In 2018, Coalville essentially doubled in size when it annexed the 1,757 acres associated with the project.

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