Tremonton Mayor Lyle Holmgren stand at the Veterans Memorial at Midland Square on Wed. March 20, 204.
TREMONTON – City officials in Tremonton say they are struggling with the same thing many other towns and cities across the state are dealing with.
Once vibrant historic downtown areas are the home to empty buildings and struggling businesses. Businesses there are for people in town but don’t bring people into the city.
The city just received a $405,000 Rural Community Opportunities Grant through Governor Cox’s office to make its community more inviting.
“We wanted to use the grant to make some changes to Midland Square. It’s a touchy issue,” said first term Tremonton Mayor Lyle Holmgren. “We are trying to make Midland Square more usable and a catalyst for upgrading our downtown. We are not going to change or get rid of the Veterans Memorial.”
The Midland Hotel site was located on Main Street at 1st W. At one time the hotel was the pride of the community. The hotel was built in 1914 and burned down in 1995; the fire took some other businesses around it, too. It was a great loss to the community. The ground where the hotel stood has since been turned into Veterans Memorial.
Holmgren is revisiting a long-standing goal to revitalize Main Street; it has been the goal since 1988.
“We are making good headway; we are supportive of the veterans, and we have citizens committee made up of veteran and citizens and businessmen to guide us,” he said. “The democratic process is messy, but we want to come up with something that will please our community and our veterans.”
Holmgren said when he talks to realtors, they talk about curb appeal and the downtown area needs to do something about its curb appeal.
“There was a lot of misinformation being spread about what we are trying to do,” the mayor said. “The veterans were concerned that we want to take away from the Veterans Memorial and we really just wanted make it more accessible.”
Currently, there are barriers that make it difficult for people to get around on the square.
They decided to make a committee made up of veteran and citizens and businessmen to guild them through the process and finalize the plan.
Holmgren said they recently repealed the original concept plan for the square, but everybody agrees something needs to be done with downtown but it’s hard to please everybody.
“I like what Logan had done with their Center Street and we recently went to 25th Street in Ogden and looked at what they had done,” he said. “Downtown Ogden was in decay 30 to 40 years ago. We were impressed with what they’ve done in Ogden.”
The original concept plan for the square was rejected, but everybody agreed something needs to be done with downtown.
“We are not going to compete with the big box stores as a small town but can bring in other things to get the focus on bringing people from out of town,” the mayor said. “Most of the small towns in Utah are having the same rough time.”
Tremonton City Manager Mark Christensen said they have been getting multiple ideas and there is a common thread of what they should do downtown.
“If we get what we want with Midland Square it will be successful,” he said. “If we can bring people together it has shown it increases the chance being successful of revitalizing downtown.”