Author: Jesse

How did the Utah Jazz do?

The first round of the 2025 NBA draft was Wednesday night and the Jazz made two selections:

• Ace Bailey with the No. 5 pick.

• Walker Clayton with the No. 18 pick.

The Jazz are three years (going on four) into a teardown-turned-rebuild and in desperate need of young players with star potential.

Advertisement

Did they find them in Bailey and/or Clayton?

Here are what national pundits thoughts about the Jazz’s first round picks.

ESPN

Jonathan Givony might be the preeminent name in NBA draft coverage right now and Givony had nothing but good things to say about the Jazz’s selection of Bailey at No. 5.

That pick — listed as one of the biggest surprises of the first round by Givony — caught many off guard after Bailey’s representation had prevented him from working out for teams in an attempt to get Bailey to a specific destination, reported to be either Washington or Brooklyn.

The Jazz nonetheless selected Bailey, who was considered a top 3 overall prospect in the draft.

Advertisement

“Bailey declined multiple invite requests to visit and workout privately with Utah throughout the predraft process, as well as the Philadelphia 76ers at No. 3 and the Charlotte Hornets at No. 4, but the Jazz felt they knew enough about his game and profile to feel comfortable drafting him regardless,” Givony wrote. “New president of basketball operations Austin Ainge interviewed Bailey at the NBA draft combine as a member of the Boston Celtics’ front office, and the rest of the Jazz brass also interviewed him separately. Ainge scouted him multiple times throughout the season at Rutgers.”

When it comes to Bailey as a prospect, Givony noted that he has “All-Star potential,” something the Jazz seriously needed on their roster.

“The Jazz get an explosive wing with All-Star potential with exceptional shot-making prowess and scoring instincts who brings insatiable aggressiveness and a strong defensive motor,” Givony wrote.

The Ringer

Bailey was the primary focus when people reviewed the Jazz’s first round and for good reason. The former Rutgers star is viewed as having legitimate star potential on the wing and many believed Utah was the perfect landing spot.

Advertisement

That includes Dann Chau, who wrote: “Honestly, as far as teams with infrastructure, commitment, and wide-open spaces go, Utah’s probably an ideal landing spot, whether Bailey realizes it or not. A win for both parties. (I love a red herring.)”

Chau, like Givony, believes Bailey has the potential to the be star Utah has been looking for for awhile now, citing Utah’s lack of excellence on the wing since Gordon Hayward left for Boston.

“The Jazz have been searching for a true star wing since Gordon Hayward’s departure damn near a decade ago,” Chau wrote. “Bailey might be the most talented player they’ve drafted in more than a decade, a long-levered contested-shot magician who has the frame and the requisite athleticism to become the kind of modern two-way star the team has hoped for years to find.”

The Athletic

John Hollinger and Sam Vecenie looked into both of Utah’s draft picks and on the whole both picks were praised, although Bailey’s boom or bust potential was a concern.

Advertisement

Of Bailey, Vecenie noted: “The ceiling for Bailey is the second-best player in this class if he improves his areas of need. Particularly, he needs to improve his flexibility and ability to play with bend while also getting stronger. That would allow him to access more power and use his gifts across the court in a more functional manner. Once he does that, Bailey would be able to start working on improving his gathers and ball pickups around the rim on his drives to improve his finishing, which would also hopefully get defenders more off-balance and give him more options.

“That would improve his shooting percentages, which again, even on pull-ups this year, were markedly low. Then, on defense, it would allow him to play the leverage game better. Hopefully, better engagement on that end would follow, too, but he showed enough upside on that end to become a player. If all of this happens, there’s serious All-Star upside. Anyone who says that doesn’t exist is flat-out wrong. There is a chance Bailey could morph into a playmaker and star-level difference-maker on the wing.”

Hollinger was noticeably less excited about the pick though.

“I wasn’t that excited about Bailey, but I’m more pessimistic than most,” he wrote. “The other interesting part will be how he fits in a Jazz frontcourt that already has Lauri Markkanen, John Collins and Walker Kessler.”

Advertisement

As for Clayton, Vecenie praised the Florida guard as a player he’s “long-loved,” with the potential to be a “high-end scorer off the bench in the NBA.”

“He’s an underrated athlete in terms of explosiveness and balance. He competes on defense and is strong, even if his size will create limitations. … There is upside beyond that if he proves capable of improving his ball-screen reads and becoming an even better passer. It’s hard to find scoring guards with this kind of pull-up gravity.”

Hollinger believes that Clayton will work best in the NBA as a secondary ball handler, seeing him as more of a combo guard than a true point guard.

“Utah has a couple of other young guards on the roster, but they’ve already been given chances and haven’t shown much,” he worte. “Clayton profiles as a combo guard whose long-distance game works best with other ballhandlers around him, so we’ll see what else the Jazz can add to the backcourt.”

NBC Sports

Kurt Helin handed out an actual grade for the Jazz’s first round — a B.

Advertisement

He was high on Bailey because of his star potential.

“The Jazz need talent,“ Helin wrote. ”Bailey has the second-highest ceiling of any player in this draft, but this feels like a boom or bust pick — and good on the Jazz for taking that swing. At this point in their team building, the Jazz should take big swings. Bailey is a prototypical modern NBA wing: he has great size, is a freak athlete, has a high motor, can create his own shot, can shoot the 3 (36.7% last season), and is a tough shot-maker. The problem is that he made tough shots because of his questionable shot selection, something Utah needs to work on. The Jazz have a very good player development staff, if they can mold Bailey, this swing could be a home run.”

Clayton was less of a win for the Jazz, in Helin estimation.

“Clayton was a clutch player for the national champion Florida. He is an impressive catch-and-shoot guy, there’s a lot to like (but enough to trade up a few spots for him?). He’s also got serious defensive questions. But he should move into the Jazz’s guard rotation and could be a quality backup for them (and maybe more eventually).”

CBS Sports

Arguably no draft expert was higher on the Jazz’s first round selection than Adam Finkelstein, who gave the Jazz an A grade for Bailey and an A- grade for Clayton.

Advertisement

Bailey, he wrote, may have the highest upside of any player in the draft.

“His upside is significant,“ Finkelstein wrote. ”He didn’t work out for them but Utah was not going to get bullied by Bailey’s representation. They took the best prospect on the board. I believe he’s a top three prospect in the draft. He’s a jumbo wing, high-level athlete and tough shot-maker. If everything clicks, he could have the highest upside in the draft. Ace Bailey is going to have an opportunity to have an immediate impact. I think in the long run this can work out very, very well for the Jazz.”

As for Clayton, Finkelstein was almost as high on high as he was on Bailey, praising Clayton’s shooting ability above all else.

“He is an elite shooter. When you’re talking about perimeter role players in the NBA, that’s the most important criteria. He is one of the very best shooters in this draft and has the versatility to play both on and off the ball. He has the body type to defend and the physical strength to be a more competitive defender in the NBA than what we saw for most of his college career.”

Yahoo Sports

Kevin O’Connor may have been the harshest analyst out there when it came to the draft and he didn’t take it easy on the Jazz, handing out a B grade for the team’s selection of Bailey.

Advertisement

His biggest concerns? That Bailey is still very raw and inconsistent. But if the Jazz are able to figure that out, the pick could be a good one.

“There’s a reason why he fell to No. 5, but this is a huge upside swing for the Jazz,” O’Connor wrote. “Bailey is a ridiculous shot-making machine, capable of splashing contested jumpers from every spot on the floor and with the swagger of a throwback bucket-getter. He had 39 points against Indiana, 37 against Northwestern, and 30 against Penn State, showing an ability to have masterful performances in which he can’t be stopped. But his raw edges as a shot creator and defender need sanding down to turn him into a full-on star.”

O’Connor loved the Jazz’s selection of Clayton, though, giving the pick an A+ grade. He even went so far as to compare Clayton to Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry.

“Along with Ace Bailey, the addition of Clayton makes the Jazz look like the funnest League Pass team next season,” O’Connor wrote. “Clayton is clutch and looked like Steph Curry at times. He’s also a culture creator. I’m very intrigued with what the Ainges are doing in Utah’s front office. Clayton is a fearless shooter with the versatility to take any shot at any moment, as we saw with him fueling the Gators to a national championship.”

Bleacher Report

Like many others, Zach Buckley had high praise for the Jazz’s pick of Bailey. He gave the selection a grade of A-, noted Bailey’s high ceiling as a prospect.

Advertisement

“Utah bet big on his talent and sky-high upside anyway,” he wrote. “… It’s a smart move for a team that has made plenty of picks in recent drafts and still hasn’t found an obvious building block. Bailey isn’t guaranteed to get there, but his potential is far more obvious than you’d see with, say, Keyonte George, Isaiah Collier or Taylor Hendricks.

“… Bailey’s ceiling is arguably as high as that of any prospect in this class not named Cooper Flagg. For the Bailey believers, he’s a star-big-wing-in-the-making. He’ll drop some wow dribble moves (particularly for a 6′8″, 18-year-old) and finish with some head-shaking tough-shot makes. If you’re in the glass-overflowing camp of optimists, you might even envision a scoring title in his future.”

Buckley did note that Bailey isn’t a sure thing and that he may never actually reach his full potential, but the Jazz took a swing that they needed to.

Buckley was not a fan of the selection of Clayton, however, giving it a C+ grade.

Advertisement

His biggest issues with Clayton were:

• Other players available at the time he was selected.

• The type of player Clayton profiles to be.

“I’m not sure I would have taken him with Kasparas Jakucionis and Jase Richardson both still on the board, but this isn’t some massive reach,” Buckley wrote.

He later added: “Clayton was the biggest catalyst behind Florida’s national championship run, which highlighted his shot-making and unwavering self-belief. He has one of the richest shooting menus in this class. He’s almost equally adept shooting off the catch or on the move, and he’s a skilled finisher despite not having great size or explosion.

“With all of that said, he’s still essentially a 6′3″ scoring guard, and NBA seemingly keeps moving away from that archetype. Maybe his moxie will allow him to be an exception, but with serious deficiencies as both a defender and a distributor, all of the pressure is on his shot-making to translate.”

The Utah County Commission passed a resolution Wednesday that ups the transient room tax on short-term rentals by a quarter of a percent.

The county brought this resolution to discussion after the Utah Legislature passed a bill this year stating counties could collect up to 4.5% on the transient room tax, compared to the previous cap of 4.25%.

Commissioner Skyler Beltran raised the question: Why raise the tax now when the travel and tourism fund is “healthy” and many of the projects planned can all be funded by the revenue the county already has?

Beltran said he spoke with hotel partners in the area and found mixed reviews about the increase. He also ran scenarios to see how much more expensive hotel stays would be for people with the increased rate.

Although it’s nice that the tax would mainly affect tourists to the county, it would still have an impact on any resident who needs to stay at a hotel elsewhere in the county, even if it’s just a few dollars difference, Beltran said.

“We’re talking minimal dollars, but I just think the overlying principle of we shouldn’t raise the tax just because we can (applies),” he said.

Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner agreed that no tax should be raised just because it’s allowed, but she sees a value in getting extra revenue for the travel fund. She said the county has been working with the Utah Legislature to determine if the transient tax funds can be used for more things.

For example, the county currently uses the general fund to pay for search and rescue operations, canyon road maintenance and other public safety needs in popular spots. However, because many of those services are heavily used by tourists, Gardner said it could be beneficial to the county to use the extra tourism revenue on bolstering those services.

“We’re not getting lost climbing the Y. It’s people that are visiting, it’s travel and tourism who are calling search and rescue hiking the Y,” she said. “I would be in favor of passing this so that we can prepare for those expanded uses, which I think is a proper use of that. I’d rather the travel and tourism pay for that than our general fund.”

Beltran voiced concern that the travel fund is more “volatile” than others and doesn’t have as consistent revenue. He doesn’t want to build new programs that would require ongoing payments from the tourism fund compared to projects that have one-time payments, he said.

Gardner said having a healthy fund helps balance out that risk for years that don’t generate as much revenue.

The County Commission voted 2-1 in favor of the resolution, with Beltran voting in opposition. The tax increase will take effect on Oct. 1.

Note to readers •The Salt Lake Tribune is making this story free to all.

A fourth and fifth Utahn have been infected with measles, according to the Utah Department of Health and Human Services.

One of the newly infected individuals is a child, the announcement noted. Of the two new patients, one lives in Utah County and the other lives in the southwest area of the state.

None of the five people with confirmed infections so far has been vaccinated, according to the department.

Two of the patients so far have been pregnant.

“Women who become infected with measles during their pregnancy are at high risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, or giving birth to a child who will experience serious medical problems,” the department said Thursday. “A pregnant woman is also much more likely to be hospitalized because of severe measles.”

The department recommended that people planning to become pregnant get vaccinated in order to protect themselves and their baby.

The measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine is 97% effective against measles if a person receives two doses, the state agency said.

So far, two of the people diagnosed with measles have been hospitalized because of complications. Both have since been released.

Measles symptoms

Measles symptoms typically appear one to two weeks after someone is exposed to the virus, according to DHHS.

They can include a fever over 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit, a cough, a runny nose and red eyes. After four feverish days, people generally develop a rash.

State health officials urge people who have been exposed and people who develop symptoms to stay away from others and call health care providers before visiting a clinic or hospital. The precautions can help the virus from spreading.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 1,227 confirmed measles cases in 37 states as of Tuesday.

The first confirmed measles case to have originated in Utah was announced June 20. The second and third known cases were announced Tuesday.

State health officials planned to host a news conference midday Thursday, making the state epidemiologist available for questions.

— This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

ESPN analyst says Ace Bailey was hoping to avoid Utah at all costs: “This was not one of his preferred destinations” originally appeared on Basketball Network.

The first round of the 2025 NBA Draft is officially behind us. Cooper Flagg went No. 1 to Dallas, as everyone expected. There weren’t any major shakeups at the top, no last-second trades or blockbuster picks to derail the board, at least not until we got to No. 5.

Advertisement

That’s when things got interesting, to say the least.

Ace Bailey, the ultra-talented Rutgers wing who’d spent the past year projected as a sure-shot top-three pick and, at one point, even made a serious case for going No. 2, unexpectedly slid down the draft board. It wasn’t just about his game, at least not for the most part.

The buzz leading up to draft night was that Bailey’s camp had discouraged or outright declined workouts with several teams, including the Philadelphia 76ers at No. 3. That move sparked speculation that Bailey had been given some sort of assurance that he is going to one of his preferred destinations, namely the Washington Wizards.

Bailey’s reaction spoke more than a thousand words

When NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced the Utah Jazz were selecting Bailey with the fifth pick, the room didn’t exactly explode with celebration. In fact, the broadcast cameras quickly caught Bailey’s face and let’s just say he didn’t look thrilled to be heading to Salt Lake City.

Advertisement

ESPN’s Jonathan Givony didn’t sugarcoat the moment either. Shortly after the pick was made, he gave a straightforward explanation of the situation.

“This was not one of his preferred destinations… Utah… He was hoping to get to either Washington, New Orleans or Brooklyn,” the ESPN analyst said with a touch of surprise.

The Buffalo Sabres moved on from right winger JJ Peterka in a three-player trade with the Utah Mammoth.

Buffalo traded Peterka, 23, to the Mammoth in exchange for defenseman Michael Kesselring and right winger Josh Doan. Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli and Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman were among those who reported the trade before the teams announced it Wednesday night.

Advertisement

Peterka also signed a five-year contract with an average annual value of $7.7 million, Utah announced.

“J.J. is a highly skilled, creative, young forward with extremely high upside,” Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong said in a press release. “He will help solidify our scoring and add to what is already a great young core of forwards on the roster. Signing J.J. to a long-term extension is another positive step towards building a sustainable contender here in Utah, and today is an exciting day for our entire organization.”

Before the trade, Peterka was a pending RFA for the Sabres, coming off his third full NHL season. He had a career-high 68 points this past season, recording 27 goals and 41 assists. He was also among the first six players added to Germany’s roster for the 2026 Winter Olympics.

With this new contract, Peterka is signed through the 2029-30 season, after which he’ll be 29 years old and a UFA.

Acquiring Peterka adds to the Mammoth’s group of young forwards. Logan Cooley, Dylan Guenther, Barrett Hayton, Matias Maccelli and Jack McBain are 25 or younger. Even captain Clayton Keller is only 26.

Advertisement

As for the Sabres, they received another 23-year-old in Doan and a 25-year-old D-man in Kesselring.

This past campaign was Doan’s first full season in the NHL. The Scottsdale, Ariz., native scored seven goals and 19 points in 51 games for Utah. He carries a $925,000 cap hit and is entering the final year of his entry-level contract.

Kesselring is entering the final year of a two-year contract worth $1.4 million per season. In his first 82-game NHL season, he scored seven goals and added 22 assists for 29 points in 82 contests. Kesselring also averaged 17:41 of ice time per game and ended the campaign with a plus-four rating.

“In general, you’re always going to say that you’d love to have a good depth on the D,” Sabres GM Kevyn Adams said earlier on Wednesday in a press conference before the trade. “Especially, right-shot D are hard to come by.”

Get the latest news and trending stories by following The Hockey News on Google News and by subscribing to The Hockey News newsletter here. And share your thoughts by commenting below the article on THN.com.

When Wesley Sundquist first started researching the human immunodeficiency virus — HIV — he wasn’t seeking out a treatment.

Rather, the chair of the University of Utah’s Department of Biochemistry in the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine said he and his team were interested in the virus molecules’ capsids — their shells holding genome material the virus needs to reproduce.

But last week, decades after Sundquist first started his HIV research in the early ‘90s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved lenacapavir, a drug Gilead Sciences created using his findings, for HIV prevention.

According to researchers, the drug can be administered to people once every six months to significantly reduce their chances of contracting HIV. According to the World Health Organization, one test proved the drug effective at preventing HIV in cisgender women when none of 2,138 participants given the drug were infected. A second trial, according to WHO, was conducted with cisgender men, transgender men, transgender women and gender nonbinary people who have sex with male partners. The organization reported that 99.9% of the participants given lenacapavir were not infected with HIV.

Sundquist said the unusual cone shape of HIV molecules’ capsids spawned his interest.

“We really didn’t know what we were going to find,” he said. “We were genuinely curious about how proteins could make a cone, and also that it was important medically. … We didn’t know where this was going to end.”

His and other research teams found that the virus cannot replicate if the conical capsid is unstable. The drug, he explained, bonds to the capsid and destabilizes it.

“It’s the structure itself — it actually breaks,” he said, comparing it to cracking a glass of liquid to have the contents drain out.

He credited Gilead for their interest in his findings as “they were the ones who sort of thought we should take a chance on this as a drug target” when most companies did not share t perspective.

Lenacapavir was awarded Science magazine’s 2024 Breakthrough of the Year. Sundquist, Gilead virologist Tomas Cihlar and former Gilead medicinal chemist John O. Link received the 2025 Warren Alpert Prize. And Sundquist and Cihlar were on the list of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025. Although the awards didn’t start flowing until fairly recently, he stressed that it’s been a long process.

For Sundquist and other researchers, he said, “it was breakthrough of the year 25 years ago, not this year. But of course it just takes time to discover things and then translate them and then test them clinically.”

Even as professionals celebrate what lenacapavir could mean for the future of HIV and AIDS, Sundquist said he worries that the drug built off of his discovery might not reach the people who need it most.

While lenacapavir is being sold in the United States under the brand name Yeztugo, Gilead has allowed six pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell generic versions of the drug “subject to required regulatory approvals, in 120 high-incidence, resource-limited countries, which are primarily low- and lower-middle income countries.”

But Sundquist does worry that the U.S. program that could help the drug get there — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, launched during the George W. Bush administration — is at risk of losing its resources as the Trump White House slashes foreign aid and medical funding.

The Associated Press reported earlier this month that the Trump administration asked Congress to rescind $400 million that had been allocated to help assist with the global HIV epidemic. The administration said it would cut “only those programs that neither provide life-saving treatment nor support American interests.”

According to nonprofit medical policy analysis group KFF — formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation — the administration has limited current PEPFAR activities to only treating and caring for the HIV-infected, preventing mother-to-child transmission, administering pre-exposure medicine to pregnant and breastfeeding women and HIV testing.

“That program is in danger,” said Sundquist, who specified his views are his own and not the university’s. “It feels fragile that just at a time when we have this brand new tool that actually prevents people from getting infected by HIV, it may not be broadly distributed.”

Moreover, he stressed his research’s dependence on long-term funding from the National Institutes of Health, from which the Trump administration has cut more than $12 billion of funding in terminated research grants and contracts since the beginning of the year, as reported by Reuters. Without the assurance of funding over multiple years, Sundquist said he doesn’t think his team’s discovery would have been possible.

“We just couldn’t have done our work. … We started in ‘92, we finished about 2004, so that’s 12 consecutive years of being funded by the NIH,” he said.

And though HIV infection is not as prevalent or threatening as the AIDS epidemic was in the ‘90s, he emphasized that HIV is still a big problem. In 2023 alone, 1.3 million people were newly infected with the virus globally, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sundquist said he hopes lenacapavir’s future global distribution isn’t unfunded before the drug — and his research — can reach those who need it.

The Echo Canyon development west of Moab — recently renamed from Kane Springs Preservation and Development — has become the first project in Utah to be certified as a preliminary municipality with limited self-governance under a new state law.

The Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office approved the certification June 9, granting developers temporary zoning and land-use authority through a legal status known as a “preliminary municipality.” Created under Senate Bill 258, the designation allows landowners to govern land use, approve infrastructure plans and begin development without local government oversight.

The authority lasts for up to six years — or four years after the first certificate of occupancy is issued — and is intended as a transitional phase before potential full incorporation. To become a town, the area must reach 100 permanent residents and win approval in a local incorporation election. If those conditions are not met, governance reverts to Grand County.

At the same time, developers are continuing to pursue traditional county approval. Grand County conditionally approved a preliminary plat for the project in March, triggering a 12-month deadline to submit a final plat that meets all county requirements. The dual-track strategy gives the developers flexibility to move forward even if delays or challenges arise in the county process.

The developers first filed for certification in March under the name Echo Canyon. State officials rejected the petition in May after determining that the legal boundary descriptions did not match those used in the required feasibility study.

The mismatch occurred because the developers had updated their maps based on a more detailed survey completed during the county’s plat review. Because state law requires the petition to match the original feasibility study boundaries exactly, they resubmitted the petition May 20 using the original coordinates.

On June 17, the Grand County Commission appointed Commission Vice Chair Melodie McCandless as the fifth and final member of Echo Canyon’s new governing board. The other four members, listed in the certified petition, are developers Craig Weston, Thomas Gottlieb, Trent Arnold and Jonathan Hoffman.

Commissioner Mary McGann, who made the nomination during the June 17 meeting, said McCandless was well suited for the role because of her balanced approach and strong work ethic.

“Melodie, probably [more than] all of us sitting around this board, has shown to be more middle of the road, looking at things different ways,” McGann said.

McCandless, whose district encompasses the development, acknowledged the position’s sensitivity given the community’s strong feelings about the project but said she was willing to step into the role.

“It’s a hard spot to fill with all the controversy in our community around it,” she said. “I am kind of the middle of the road person and I would do it. It’s a little scary but I’ll learn a lot, just like I have been.”

The certification is just the first of four applications in Utah pursuing approval as preliminary municipalities under SB 258, according to the Lt. Governor’s Office.

A state-commissioned feasibility study released in January found the proposed 176‑acre development could support essential municipal services through projected tax revenue and population growth. A public hearing held March 5 at Star Hall drew more than 230 attendees and over 30 public comments — most of them opposing the project. Speakers raised concerns about flood risk, infrastructure demands, housing affordability and financial impacts on Grand County.

Under SB258, feasibility studies must assume the development will be built as proposed and do not evaluate whether it is viable, appropriate or likely to succeed. Preliminary municipalities also lack taxing authority and must rely on private funding until incorporation is finalized.

To counteract the law’s impact, Rep. Mike Kohler, R-Midway, introduced HB540 during the last legislative session to stop the creation of any additional preliminary municipalities. The bill passed the House but died without a vote in the Senate.

The Echo Canyon project spans 176 acres along Kane Creek Boulevard southwest of Moab. Current plans include 478 residential units, 102 overnight accommodations and 67,000 square feet of commercial space. At least 10% of the housing units are required to be designated as affordable under SB258, though critics have questioned the enforceability of that requirement.

Developers have previously said they are pursuing both state and county approval to determine which path allows the project to move forward.

The county-level process has faced delays over several years. Developers first submitted a preliminary plat application in 2021, but it was delayed by zoning appeals, multiple rounds of revisions and infrastructure planning issues. In 2024, the county approved a conditional use permit for the project’s wastewater system after developers appealed a prior denial.

Echo Canyon has also faced criticism due to its location in a floodplain. Developers obtained a FEMA Letter of Map Revision after elevating portions of the site by four to 12 feet, but opponents argue that it does not ensure long-term flood protection. Many residents and advocacy groups, including Kane Creek Development Watch, have raised concerns about the project’s environmental impacts, infrastructure burden and housing affordability.

This story was first published by The Times-Independent.