Suburbs are booming in Utah

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 21, 2006 | by Deborah Bulkeley Deseret Morning News

Not so long ago, if you asked Jess Gomez about Herriman, he'd draw a blank.

"We had never even considered Herriman," he said. "In fact, if you asked me to pick out Herriman on a map, I couldn't even get there."

Then, Gomez visited Herriman with his family and "We really fell in love with it."

A little more than a year ago, the Gomez family moved to the booming community in southwest Salt Lake County.

Herriman incorporated in 1999 with a population of 800, according to Mayor J. Lynn Crane. Now, it's the state's fastest growing city, according to population estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The city grew by nearly 33 percent to 11,226 people between July 1, 2004 and July 1, 2005. Herriman has grown by an estimated 450 percent since 2000.

And Crane believes that's an undercount.

"The real population is over 16,000," he said. "We're certain of that."

Meanwhile, Gomez's hometown of Murray is shrinking. With a 2005 population of 44,555, it lost about 1.7 percent of its year 2000 population, according to the census. Salt Lake City, the state's largest city, also continued to lose people. The city's 2005 population of 178,097 was a drop of about 2 percent from 2000.

"It's a smaller city, a little bit slower paced and a very nice place to raise our family," Gomez said of Herriman. "It's absolutely beautiful."

As the Wasatch Front continued to suburbanize, other large Utah cities saw slight population declines, including Bountiful, Ogden, Sandy and Taylorsville.

It's part of a national trend. Bigger, older cities are losing ground as Americans flock to suburban open spaces and affordable homes, especially in the West and Sun Belt.

In California, another small suburban city, Elk Grove, is the nation's fastest growing. It's also new. Elk Grove incorporated six years ago. The Sacramento suburb grew by 11.6 percent in one year to 112,000 people.

The national growth rankings were listed for cities of 100,000 or more. The top five were all suburban cities with fewer than 200,000 residents.

Elk Grove was followed in the top five by North Las Vegas, Nev.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; Gilbert, Ariz.; and Cape Coral, Fla.

Among big cities losing population were Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Norfolk, Va.

In Utah, Herriman was once a small, rural community. Since it incorporated, "its population has just been skyrocketing," said Robert Spendlove, manager of demographic and economic analysis for the Governor's Office of Planning and Budget.

Herriman's relatively cheap land prices and mountainside location seems to be attracting young homebuyers, Spendlove said. It's what demographers call a "donut effect."

"The urbanized core grows at a slower rate," he said. "Areas on the periphery have close access to urban amenities, lower land prices and a relatively easy commute to the urban core."

And with growth comes challenges. Gomez said in the year he's lived in Herriman he's already noticed new developments and increasing traffic.

Crane said city officials are working hard to make sure services keep pace with growth.

"We are dealing with it as well as we can," he said.

Like Herriman, most of Utah's fastest-growing cities are small and suburban. Three of the five fastest-growing cities were in Utah County. Eagle Mountain grew by 18 percent in one year to 10,343, Cedar Hills grew by 17 percent to 7,790 and Lehi grew by 15 percent to 31,730.

Washington County also continued to see strong growth. Washington City ranked second to Herriman, growing by 18 percent to 13,669. Hurricane also saw a strong growth rate of 12 percent.

St. George gained 4,124 people in one year -- more than any other Utah city -- growing to an estimated 64,201 people in 2005.

Utah County continues to grow as well. With a 2005 population of 113,459, Provo inched past West Valley City to again become the state's second-largest city. However, Spendlove said the difference of 159 people between the two cities falls within the census estimates' margin of error. And Orem, with a population of 89,713, became the fifth-largest city, nudging past Sandy's 89,664 population.

Several Utah County cities showed a loss of residents, though they may challenge that, Spendlove said. American Fork lost nearly 3,700 people in one year, according to the estimates.

"Utah County is seeing strong population growth right now," Spendlove said. "It would surprise me to see any Utah County cities seeing population losses. . . . That's one of the struggles of the very nature of population estimates. It is not an exact science."

E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com