The Midvale City Council approved the adoption of Murray City's Fashion Place West Station Area Plan on Feb. 3. The plan includes increasing the number of mixed-use housing units near the railway station and improving walkable connections from the train terminal to surrounding neighborhoods and Fashion Place Mall.

Midvale’s city staff worked with Murray on the station master plan because – under Utah state law – station plans must cover a half-mile radius around a train depot. And a small portion of Midvale’s northernmost point lies within the half-mile boundary of Fashion Place West Station.

“This really just encompasses some properties along Cottonwood Street and 400 West,” Midvale’s Community Development Director Adam Olsen told the council in February. “It might encompass one or two full properties, but largely just portions of other ones.” 

Olsen added that a grant from the Wasatch Front Regional Council (WFRC) fully funded Midvale's work on the station plan.

Train pulling into Fashion Place West. (Giovanni Radtke/City Journals)

Midvale’s role in the Fashion Place West Plan is to conform with Murray’s “jobs and mixed-use zoning.” Murray’s station area plan lays out a 30-year vision that includes converting sections of Fashion Place Mall’s parking lot into a mix of houses and office buildings; creating a community park within the Jefferson Park district; and activating commercial activity along the Winchester Bridge. 

The mixed-use zone also aims to create a housing community on land owned by the Utah Transit Authority in the “station's core.” 

“Development in the Station Core will be anchored by the redevelopment of UTA-owned parcels, transitioning surface parking and underutilized property into a vibrant mixed-use campus with active ground floors and high-quality public realm that encourages walking, biking and transit use,” the Fashion West Station Area Plan reads. 

“This goes right along with what we’d like to see here [in Midvale] in the future as this area redevelops, we’d really like to see higher densities and mixed use,” Olsen said. 

Every locality with a train station must provide state officials with a station area plan after House Bill 462 was signed into law in 2022. The three train stations in Midvale – Bingham Junction, Midvale Center and Midvale Fort Union – already have plans in place. 

Mayor Dustin Gettel said he is proud of all the work the city's staff put into developing the three station plans.

“I was in a WFRC meeting two weeks ago, and there are some communities much larger than Midvale talking about how they have … one station area plan, but Midvale, six square miles, has three station area plans,” Gettel said. “ … And I’m proud to say that I don’t think there’s another city, not even Salt Lake City in Salt Lake County, who has as many of these station area plans as little six-square-mile Midvale.”

Map of Murray City and surrounding municipalities. (Courtesy of Midvale)