One key strategy of the Wasatch Choice Vision is to create and enhance city and town centers as the hearts of our communities – walkable areas where activity is focused, with places to live, work and play. Areas around high-capacity transit stations are ideal such locations.

Housing and Transportation Reinvestment Zones (HTRZs) are authorized under state law as a policy and financing tool to facilitate additional mixed-use development around transit stations. Cities can propose HTRZs, working in concert with other public-sector stakeholders and private-sector developers, within eligible areas around existing and near-term planned rail and bus rapid transit (BRT) stations.

Given the current housing affordability crisis along the Wasatch Front, with rapidly rising home prices and rent rates, HTRZs enable an all-hands-on-deck approach to help mitigate the housing affordability crisis and to better utilize transit infrastructure and investment.