On Oct. 23, the Logan Planning Commission approved a small infill project that sparked a larger debate over one of Cache Valley’s toughest challenges: how to add more housing without tearing apart the neighborhoods that already exist.
Commissioners voted to allow The Foundry, a six-unit, three-story townhome project on a narrow 0.21-acre lot near 450 North and 200 West. Developer Danny Macfarlane said the homes would be sold — not rented — each about 1,000 square feet with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a garage, targeting a price near $275,000.
“That’s always hard to find, a lot that is so small, to try to find a useful use of it,” commission chair Eldon Peterson said. “I do appreciate the effort to provide us affordable housing. It is especially nice to see affordable housing for ownership.”
Peterson added it was “nice to see a different type of housing coming into the market” at a price point that’s “hard to find.”
Keeping costs down, however, required compromises. Macfarlane asked for flexibility on window coverage and facade detailing, known in planning terms as “fenestration,” to stay within budget. Some commissioners hesitated, worried approving those exceptions could set a precedent for more “blank wall” designs.
“It is shoehorned into a small lot,” senior planner Russ Holley said, summarizing the difficulty of the site.
In response, Macfarlane said the project’s goal was to create attainable homes while still meeting city standards.
“We just need to make a point that we are trying to increase the availability of affordable, accessible housing,” he said. “It’s not that we’re abandoning the fenestration rules. We’re just giving a parameter to be able to make a project work in the area where we want these projects to work.”
Commissioner Ken Heare said he was concerned about “the look of it,” particularly where the project backed against existing homes. Logan resident David Perry voiced similar worries about privacy and sunlight, saying the building’s height could block backyard views.
In the end, commissioners approved the project with conditions: the townhomes must meet minimum window requirements on street-facing and neighboring sides, and access and drainage issues must be resolved before construction.
That exchange reflected Logan’s broader housing dilemma. The city needs more homes under $300,000, but residents and planners continue to debate what tradeoffs are acceptable to get there.
For Josh Runhaar, executive director of the Neighborhood Nonprofit Housing Corporation and a longtime land-use planner in Cache County, the debate at City Hall mirrors the one happening across the region.
“We had two years in a row where we were, you know, high 20%, near 30% increase in housing costs,” Runhaar said. “A lot of that was related to materials, labor, just shortages across the board… that pushed a lot of housing costs up rapidly.”
Even as supply costs level off, he said, zoning restrictions and long permitting timelines continue to inflate prices.
“You buy land, you’re trying to develop it, and it now takes anywhere from three to five years to get a piece of land to put a house on it,” Runhaar said. “If the house you have to put on it is now a quarter or third acre, you can’t put an affordable house on that size of a lot because the lot is just too expensive.”
He said the squeeze hits two groups hardest: renters and first-time buyers.
“If you owned a home five years ago, you’re relatively safe,” he said. “But trying to get into a home today is ridiculously expensive… Incomes have not hung up significantly to offset the cost of housing. If you’re a renter, you have no ability to lock in stable housing costs. You’re facing constant increases.”
Runhaar said density remains the single biggest factor in housing cost, a point often at odds with resident concerns.
“Density is always going to be the number one driver of cost factor in housing,” he said. “If I can only get three homes in a given linear footage, my costs are set. If I get six homes instead, my infrastructure costs are reduced by 50%.”
Despite that, Runhaar said Logan has done “a pretty decent job” relative to its neighbors by allowing multifamily housing and avoiding overly large lot requirements. The harder fights, he said, come in smaller cities that want to maintain their rural character.
That regional divide frustrates Shawn Milne, director of community and economic development for the Bear River Association of Governments and co-chair of the Cache Valley Housing Crisis Task Force. He said housing in Cache Valley can’t be separated from its job market, and that many local employers are struggling to recruit workers who can afford to live nearby.
Milne said he’s hearing the same story from companies across the valley: even well-paying employers can’t offer enough for new hires to live where they work. Companies like Campbell Scientific and ASI, he said, are competing for engineers and skilled workers who still find themselves priced out.
“They’re saying, ‘I still can’t afford a home, so I’ve got to live at mom and dad longer,’” Milne said.
He added that this is no longer just a low-wage issue. Middle-income families, the kind that once anchored Cache Valley communities, now struggle between limited supply and rising prices.
“There’s seeming to be this movement where ‘moderate income’ is starting to feel like a label for people, when really it’s just the middle-class folks that are raising their children,” Milne said. “Middle class is where the vast majority, by quantity, of housing units has been built, and yet we’re not building a lot of that these days.”
Milne concluded that public opposition to new housing often arises from misconceptions about congestion. When people oppose density, they often cite traffic, but Milne argued that sprawl is the bigger culprit. Denser “downtown pockets,” he said, would let more people live near jobs and grocery stores, reducing car trips.
He emphasized the need for regional cooperation. Smaller cities, he said, often leave the toughest housing discussions to Logan, preferring to “let the bigger city take the heat.” Without coordination, he warned, young adults from Smithfield, Hyde Park and Providence will continue to be priced out of their hometowns.
“If these communities don’t talk more together,” Milne said, “nobody’s having the hard truth spoken to them.”
After approving The Foundry, commissioners shifted focus to a broader rewrite of Logan’s infill and flag-lot rules: regulations that govern how new homes fit into existing neighborhoods and how narrow parcels can be developed.
“This is a legislative project,” Holley said, explaining that the update would give the City Council “more latitude in the conversation.”
The proposal adds standards for “middle-of-the-block infill,” such as requiring sidewalks, setbacks and proper access roads once a project reaches a certain size.
Resident Joshua Garnick called the draft “a huge improvement over the old, existing standard,” saying setbacks and sidewalks are “huge for kids who are walking to school that I see every day on my cameras past my house.”
The commission ultimately forwarded the amendment to the City Council with adjustments. The goal, commissioners said, is to make small-scale housing possible without sacrificing safety, privacy or design quality.
As Logan grows, planners and developers will continue to look inward — into back lots, narrow corridors and leftover parcels — to find space for the homes people need.
Carson Frost is a student in the Journalism Department at Utah State University.