CEDAR CITY — Business owners, local government officials and others gathered at Cedar City’s Courtyard by Marriott to eat a hearty breakfast and learn more about the recent goings-on across Iron County.

The Cedar City Chamber of Commerce hosted the State of the Cities Economic Review Breakfast Wednesday morning. It featured civic leaders from four Iron County municipalities.

Brian Head Town Manager Bret Howser said the visitation and growth continued to be an emphasis for the resort town.

“I’m sure that’s the general theme everywhere, but certainly the general theme of Brian Head — things are getting busier,” he said.

Still, Howser said another focus for 2024 is to “put more polish on the town and start to — in business terms — start to deliver a little better on our brand promise of being an up-and-coming resort community.”

Traffic, parking issues and nightly rentals in residential neighborhoods have begun to impact the “Brian Head experience.”

“Our job is to mitigate that impact,” Howser said, adding that these problems are what they wanted. The ski resort recently hit 300,000 skier visits; their next goal is a million. And while it might sound “insane,” he said, “it’s coming.”

To support increased tourism, the town hopes to add more ski lifts, shops and restaurants, among others. New infrastructure projects are also in the works, including crosswalks and shuttle stops. Recent and ongoing projects include installing public art, like Brian the Bear, constructing a new playground and creating new trails.

Howser said the Aspen Meadows development, while in the preliminary stage, would include residential, commercial and mixed-use areas and ski lifts. The nearly 2,000-acre project would double the size of Brian Head, “both geographically and a source of potential residential units.”

Cedar City Mayor Garth Green said the city’s growth rate is “staggering,” with a nearly 8% increase in hotel stays and 196 subdivisions in process, representing 5,600 lots ready to develop. Upcoming projects include the $70 million South Cedar Interchange improvements and a new 55-foot hotel on Main Street.

“We’re not done yet, folks,” he said.

Green’s primary focus was water and the city’s “greatest accomplishment” — $35 million spent on old water rights last year. Approximately $18 million was financed, with the rest funded from the city’s accounts.

“Cedar City was severely handicapped three and a half years ago at the issuance of the groundwater management plan in our area,” he said. “At that time, Cedar City had a huge amount of water, but we didn’t have the old water.”

Under the Utah State Engineer’s Office plan for Basin 73, which impacts Cedar City, water rights issued later than 1934 will be unavailable to use by 2080. The first cuts will begin in 2035 when water rights issued after 1957 will be regulated, Cedar City News reported.

While Green’s initial plan was to transport water to the area from other locations, multiple opportunities arose to purchase water rights for “below market value.” This included nearly 1,000 acre-feet of the valley’s oldest water, dated as early as 1860, for over $11 million.

The city also plans to drill new wells, with work focusing on water in Cedar Canyon, an existing well north of the Cedar City Regional Wastewater Treatment Facility and west of the city, where the city owns water rights.

Two city parks are in progress. With the state’s final approval, the city will exchange lands with the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration to build a park near Fiddler’s Canyon, Green said. In April, the city plans to plant grass for soccer fields at the upcoming Iron West Soccer Complex.

Enoch Mayor Geoffrey Chesnut said that Enoch is also growing, with 200-plus lots ready to be built and 100,000 square feet of industrial improvements in the works. Various businesses are expected to open, including O’Reilly Auto Parts, Dollar General and Associated Foods.

Other facilities that will also open soon include the new Children’s Justice Center, Southwest Wildlife Foundation’s Enoch Wildlife Rescue facility and KJ’s Ice Barn.

The city plans to begin improvements to state Route 91 in 2025 after receiving a $2 million grant and is coordinating with Cedar City to develop a Master Transportation Plan, Chesnut said.

“The main intersection for Enoch City is actually not in Enoch City,” he said. “It’s in Cedar City, right there by the bowling alley, right? And so there’s incentive for us to want to coordinate and collaborate in that, and we’re grateful for our Cedar City partners.”

Chesnut discussed the importance of community and shared some upcoming events, like the annual Wings of Death competition, where locals participate in “40 minutes of just beating people senseless with hot sauces and terrible patriotic trivia.”

“The cynic is going to say, ‘That’s entertainment. That’s not in the government’s role.’ Well, sometimes watching people eat hot wings with your friends and your neighbors as you have some hot dogs — it’s fun, but it’s also community,” he said. “And I think that is government’s role.”

“And if you think that it’s not — that’s OK. One of us is wrong, and it’s not me,” Chesnut added to the audience’s laughter.

“I’m going to start with something just bonkers,” said Parowan Mayor Mollie Halterman. She began her speech with a bit of karaoke, singing a portion of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” — a penalty for coming last in her Fantasy Football league.

Halterman said Parowan is coining 2024 as the “year of everything at once,” with multiple annexation and subdivision requests.

Various projects are in the works, including adding more trails, constructing a runway and hangars at the Parowan Airport, reconstructing the bridge on SR-91 and building pickleball courts at the Valentine Peak Sports Complex.

“Seriously, we can talk infrastructure all day, but we start to talk pickleball courses, and people think we really are getting things done,” she said.

Additionally, Parowan saw a record-high number of new business license applications at 216. Various small shops are expected to open, as well as larger commercial ventures, including a hotel, a Maverick gas station, two Terrible’s gas stations and an ACE Hardware Store, Halterman said.

Additionally, she said, “There’s power in community.”

“There are opportunities everywhere to make our cities better and Iron County better,” Halterman said. “And the only thing that I can say is, I would be completely overwhelmed, but the solution to the problem is we have each other.”

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