Ogden City's Possible Fate-- as Foretold by Bob G.

As mentioned earlier in the comments to another Weber County Forum thread, I'm in the process of researching an article on the "Lift Ogden" group. I'm still contacting the group's movers and shakers, one by one, and hope to post a comprehensive article imminently.

In the meantime though, I'll pass on something Descente's Bob Geiger told me yesterday. We had a long and candid conversation, and here's one cat that he let out of the bag:

He warned that Ogden city is on the verge of having a number of older downtown buildings meet the fate of the wrecking ball, and that we would be learning all about this very soon. We'll have more dirt parking lots downtown, he suggests. Without some kind of aggressive intervention, the mess downtown will get worse before it gets better, in other words.

Lo and behold, the Standard-Examiner ran a John Wright story which fulfills Mr. Geiger's prediction, in this morning's edition, under this catchy headline: "Final Wrap for Candy Building." Another grand old lady of Ogden city's "golden age," the Shupe Williams Candy Company factory, will be meeting its final end. You can read all about it here. According to the story, this structure has been vacant since 1967, so we can well imagine what awful shape it's in. This also raises the question -- how many similar downtown buildings does Ogden city own -- and how many of those are scheduled for demolition?

If nothing else, I'm going to keep in close contact with the Geiger boys if I can. It's obvious that they're privy to at least some "insider information," which is the red meat that our gentle Weber County Forum readers crave.

What's also obvious, though, is that the Geigers and their company have a strong vested interest in cultivating a positive public attitude (Bob Geiger characterizes this as "cautious optimism") toward aggressive redevelopment in Ogden City. Descente is planning a symbiotic clustering of ski-industry businesses that goes far beyond anything we've read about in the Standard-Examiner, according to Mr. Geiger. The further deterioration of downtown Ogden would of course be highly contraproductive to that effort. It thus becomes quite apparent why Descente has become so very actively involved in Ogden city affairs. This is quite admirable, I believe. If there is any general negative quality of the citizens of Ogden city that I've observed, it's apathy and complacency. We all have a vested interest in the happenings in our community.

Comments, anyone? Are there aspects of today's this article, or the John Wright article, that you'd like to focus upon? You can use this as an open thread too, for anything else you'd like to bring up. My calender's fairly busy today, so perhaps I'll turn the forum over to you folks for a while.