Congratulations to our partners South Salt Lake City, Utah Clean Energy, Rocky Mountain Power, Salt Lake Community College, and The Utah Aerospace Pathways program.
They were all recently recognized for their efforts to develop a network of quality communities, to improve Utah’s future transportation, to help rural Utah, and to prepare Utah’s workforce for jobs of the future. Eight projects in total were recognized at the event for their power to help promote the qualities that Utahns say they want the state to have in the future.
Gov. Gary Herbert joined Envision Utah and the Quality Growth Commission in recognizing these innovative efforts to create places where Utahns can thrive and maintain their quality of life despite the significant population growth coming to the state.
Honored for helping develop a network of quality communities were:
- The Meadows at Riverbend, a master-planned community in Ogden that mixes 69 townhomes, 125 apartments and 25,000 square feet of retail/office space.
- South Salt Lake’s East Streetcar Neighborhood, which advances the development of a transit-oriented community along the S-Line Streetcar, partly through the city’s molding of a code providing visual guidelines of how the corridor should appear.
Singled out for improving Utah’s future housing and transportation were:
- Ivory Homes for building houses that are more energy efficient, with insulated exterior walls 6 inches thick instead of the customary 4 inches. These measures cut home air-pollution emissions and reduce utility usage.
- Utah Clean Energy and multiple university, government and nonprofit partners who teamed up to make bulk purchases of electric vehicles, helping more than 200 drivers switch to less-polluting cars.
For helping rural Utah, awards went to:
- Rocky Mountain Power, whose energy audits saved rural small businesses $12 million through measures that are projected to pay themselves off within 18 months.
- The Moab Area Housing Resource Guide, which helped people find scarce housing in the southeastern Utah recreation hub as well as information about economic development, public health, energy, and sustainability services.
Applauded for their efforts to prepare Utah’s workforce for jobs of the future were:
- Utah Aerospace Pathways, which helps high school students get paid internships with aerospace companies and earn manufacturing certificates beneficial to pursuing careers after high school.
- Salt Lake Community College for its Promise Program, which gives everyone a chance to get a college degree, covering tuition and fees for full-time students who develop a two-year degree plan.
