As you head south from Moab on Spanish Valley Drive or US-191 you’ll soon reach Spanish Valley and will cross from Grand County into San Juan County and you will see a lot of empty land. Except for areas mostly along the major corridors, the southern part of Spanish Valley has thus far experienced limited development.

The vast majority of the open land is under the ownership of the Trust Lands Administration (“Utah’s Trust Lands”), which is sometimes referred to as SITLA – School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration. Utah Trust Lands’ primary mission is to generate income from its land holdings that are checker-boarded across Utah to fund educational institutions and related endeavors.

The following photo was taken from Utah Trust Lands’ Community Structure Plan (notations were added for Balanced Rock and “looking south”):

The following map shows the extensive holdings of Utah Trust Lands in blue (BLM land is in yellow) in Spanish Valley:

Very little of the undeveloped land in Spanish Valley is privately owned. Balanced Rock is on one of the few remaining privately-owned parcels of significant size.

For the past few years Utah Trust Lands has been working with San Juan County to master plan a community on approximately 1,800 acres of unincorporated land (indicated by magenta hash marks, above).

The planned community is currently named “South Valley,” and the plan includes:

• Residential – Approximately 4,100 residential housing units (single-family, duplex, townhomes, apartments)
• Business/Commercial – Hundreds of acres for restaurants, hotels, gas stations, offices, shopping centers, warehouse and retail
• Civic/Public- Many acres for schools, parks, trails and open space

We anticipate construction of the South Valley community to start within a few years. This new “city” will be a refreshing place to dine, shop and spend time as an alternative to Moab City, which is compromised by having all of the US-191 traffic running right through the heart of its downtown area. Utah Trust Lands is doing a great job master planning this development, and has already invested in water and sewer improvements and is currently working on civil engineering for the street layouts.

When finished, the “South Valley” population will likely be larger than Moab’s population, and if incorporated will be the biggest city in San Juan County.

The Balanced Rock community is designed to fit in with the South Valley community, and is located just to the east of the future Neighborhood Center where stores, restaurants and other retail is planned to be built.

Following, are some representations of the vision for South Valley, which were obtained from Utah Trust Lands’ Community Structure Plan:

Examples of Desert Modern Commercial, Residential and Mixed-use buildings that are appropriate for Central Development Area locations:

Examples of Desert Modern Residential buildings appropriate for Perimeter Development Area locations:

Examples of buildings appropriate for Neighborhood Centers:

Examples of buildings appropriate for Flex locations:

You can access Utah Trust Lands planning documents on the San Juan County website: https://sanjuancounty.org/planning

You can learn more about Utah Trust Lands at their website: https://trustlands.utah.gov