Outdoors is on the Way Up in Ogden, Utah

By WENDY KNIGHT
Published: June 22, 2007
New York Times

WEDGED between old stockyards and a boarded-up packing plant on the western edge of town, the kayak park is not easy to find. But it is just the kind of thing that draws outdoor enthusiasts to Ogden, Utah,

Of the 15 paddlers gathered at the park, on the Ogden River, one Saturday this spring, nearly half were from Salt Lake City, 35 miles away, while one man drove 90 miles from Provo for the day.

“Ogden is rocking right now,” said Craig Haaser, 44, a potter born and raised in Ogden who was among the paddlers at the park that day.

Set in the western foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, Ogden, a city of approximately 83,000 people, is fast gaining on places like Boulder, Colo., as a destination for extreme sports.

Miles of mountain biking wind through the Wasatch-Cache National Forest within minutes of downtown, and the Ogden and Weber Rivers provide ample opportunity for in-town kayaking and canoeing. In addition, Snowbasin Resort, the site for the 2002 Olympic downhill and super G ski events, is less than 20 miles up Ogden Canyon.

Among several new developments in town is the 125,000-square-foot Salomon Recreation Center that will include a climbing wall, a surf rider pool, a bowling alley, a dance studio, a wind tunnel and a Gold's Gym. The center, which is to open this summer, is part of a multimillion-dollar entertainment and residential complex called the Junction that will occupy 20 formerly decrepit acres downtown.

While the 2002 Olympics helped raise Ogden's profile, it is the efforts of city officials, outdoor-company executives and real estate developers that are transforming the town, a former railroad hub.

The city is poised to be “the high adventure Mecca of the country,” said Mayor Matthew Godfrey, 36, over a chopped salad at Rooster's Brewing Company on Historic 25th Street.
The mayor, who took office in 2000, says he sees outdoor recreation as a means to a vibrant and financially sound community.

“We need more high-paying jobs,” he said. “We need tourism. We need a 20-to-40-year-old demographic that likes to work hard and play hard.”

To achieve that, he is recruiting recreation companies to move to town. One such company is Goode Ski Technologies, a manufacturer of carbon fiber water and snow skis and ski poles, formerly based in Waterford, Mich.

“The mayor rolled out the red carpet for me, literally,” recalled David Goode, the president and founder who relocated his 35-employee company to Ogden in August 2005.

Other ski companies, like Scott USA and Rossignol, have established small operations downtown or in Business Depot Ogden, an industrial park north of downtown. This fall, Amer Sports, the maker of Salomon and Atomic skis, expects to move its headquarters into the former American Can Building at 20th and Grant Streets that it is currently renovating.

Though Ogden is emerging as a snow sports hub, many other sports lure visitors to town. With a $1.5 million investment from Goode Ski Technologies, the city is also building a 70-acre water ski park on an existing lake that will include a half-mile-long slalom course, a 17-acre fishing lake and an 18,000-seat amphitheater for plays and concerts, a complex that Mr. Goode hopes will help to bring the water ski championship to Ogden in 2011.

Ogden already is host of a spring marathon and the Xterra Mountain Championship, an off-road triathlon with mountain biking and trail running events. It is also on the brink of being a notable climbing destination.

TWO years ago, Jeff Lowe, 56, a former world-class mountaineer who sits on a mayoral sports advisory committee, established Ogden Climbing Parks, a nonprofit organization to “make Ogden attractive to climbers,” he said. Mr. Lowe, who moved back to Ogden after 30 years in Boulder, established a series of climbing routes using bolted ladder rungs, called a via ferrata, on private land in Waterfall Canyon last year. His current project is a tower of ice — suspended from steel cables — to be used for ice climbing. He plans to build it next winter in Ogden.
The city's commitment to outdoor recreation and an adventure-based economy is attracting young professionals, some of whom are buying and refurbishing 1920s bungalows in once rundown neighborhoods.

“We see it as a diamond in the rough,” Delanie Hill, 32, said of Ogden's downtown. She and her husband, Jeff, 34, are both graphic designers; they bought a 2,200-square-foot Arts and Crafts house in 2000 for $115,000.

“It was kind of a lot at the time,” Ms. Hill said, considering other young professionals were buying two-bedroom homes for $40,000 or $50,000 in their neighborhood around Harrison Avenue and 27th Street. Once an area of “extreme poverty with two and three families living to a house” the neighborhood has changed sharply in recent years, said Ms. Hill, who grew up near Alta Resort and worked in Jackson Hole.

“I can't afford to live in Jackson,” she said, “but I can here.”

The average price of a three-bedroom home in Ogden runs about $160,000, according to Stan Booth, an Ogden-based real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. Real estate “exploded” a couple years after the 2002 Olympics, Mr. Booth said, especially in Ogden Valley, where “people from Florida and California paid asking price and felt they were getting a killer deal.” The market has since leveled off, he said.

In 2004, Mr. Haaser, the kayaking potter, who lives in Ogden year round, bought a four-bedroom house, which he is remodeling, with views of Snowbasin, for $215,000. He recently received an unsolicited offer of $350,000 for the five-acre property.

Rising property values aside, it is the revitalization of downtown that is drawing the most attention. Once home to brothels and taverns frequented by railroad workers in the late 1880s, and more recently to transients and prostitutes who moved in after residents and commerce fled the downtown in the 1980s, Historic 25th Street is both a link to Ogden's past and its future as a tourist destination.

Faux gas lanterns and sycamore trees strung with white lights line the wide east-west boulevard. Shaded by striped awnings, the century-old brick storefronts house art galleries, acupuncturists and cafes.

The town's arts scene is anchored by Peery's Egyptian Theater, which is a satellite site for the Sundance Film Festival in Park City and presents theatrical and musical performances throughout the year.

There are still empty buildings and a handful of dank bars on 25th Street, where men in dirty T-shirts call out to women walking by. Near a taco stand on the corner of 25th and Washington Boulevard, a gritty man with a faded blue bandanna around his forehead waited at the bus stop.
“That's what keeps Ogden from being too cool,” Mr. Lowe said.

Despite the lingering rough-town image, development continues. The mayor is seeking to build a gondola that would connect downtown to a proposed ski and resort community that would occupy nearly 1,800 acres and include Malan's Basin, 1,440 acres of mountainside land owned by a Salt Lake developer, Chris Peterson, who is championing the idea.

Beyond the added $10 million in tax revenues the mayor expects from the private investment, the mayor says he is intrigued with the “urban to mountain experience” the gondola would create.

But some residents are skeptical. “Nothing about this makes sense from a common sense perspective,” said Dan Schroeder, a physics professor at Weber State University and board member of the local Sierra Club, referring to the logistics of relocating existing power lines and water reservoirs.

While the reduction of pollution and traffic appeals to many of the town's environmentally conscious residents, it is the development of public and private land — including a 113-acre public golf course and over 200 acres of undeveloped land currently used for mountain biking and hiking — into a private residential community of empty nesters and second-home owners that rankles some.

“Ogden is known because of its outdoor recreation,” Mr. Haaser said. “What we have here is wonderful. Let's just keep in that way.”