Draper's open-space plan says finish the trail to Alpine. The council's direction says hold off

Draper's own documents give the council's direction a harder edge than the argument behind it. In the East Hollows chapter of the Draper Open Space Plan, still listed as current 9, the fifth numbered action says: "Complete Bonneville Shoreline Trail to Alpine" 3. The general plan, revised in 2025, sets no open-space goals of its own; it points at the Open Space Master Plan for them 5. Wherever a reader looks, city policy points at an action the council has decided not to take.

None of that makes Draper idle. The city finished Jensen Farm Park's last phase this year, opened the Puerto Rico Trail and the Rattler access, set a bridge by helicopter for about $50,000, and is building Hidden Canyon Park at roughly $1.2 million with grants 1. It counts 5,625 acres of parks and open space and 152 miles of trails 6. The Alpine approach did not come out of that program: staff told the parks committee in November 2025 that a developer building on the Alpine side had come to the city, that most of the ground needed is Draper open space, Alpine open space and private land, and that a private owner's permission would be required 2. Draper maintains the Corner Canyon and Bonneville Shoreline trails even across Forest Service land 3. A city that paid for its own network may fairly ask what it gets for the next mile; staff say the answer here runs mainly to Alpine 1.

The record complicates that in three places.

First, there is no test to apply. The 2023 Parks, Recreation and Trails Master Plan says Draper has no standard or level of service for open space at all, because such land tends to be acquired opportunistically 4. Parks got a number — 319.9 acres by 2050 to hold 3.5 acres per 1,000 residents, 76.7 still unbuilt 4. Open space got the word "opportunistic." The council's judgement that the link "mostly benefited Alpine residents" 1 may be right, and it is still an unwritten test applied to the one trail that crosses a city line, relayed as staff's account of a feeling rather than a vote anyone can look up.

Second, the pause is not free. A year earlier the same staff had shown the committee the alignment as a Bonneville Shoreline Trail connector, the regional route the county and state have been assembling along the foothills 28. The Bonneville Shoreline Trail's published route for the region runs from the Suncrest Trailhead over the ridge to the Fort Canyon Trailhead 8, and in late 2021 Alpine, Draper, Highland and Lehi worked out a strategy for the trail along the Traverse Mountains' south face 7. Draper's own stretch waits on the link: as of April 2024 the city was not designating the Fango trail east of Woods Hollow as BST "until it can connect all the way to Alpine and construct a safe crossing of Suncrest Drive" 7. That crossing is already on the city's list of proposed crossings, in the Mercer Hollow area 4.

Third, the program changed shape without a vote. In November 2025 a committee member described the trail program as having settled into a maintenance phase 2. This month it cut its 2027 calendar to six meetings, at 6 a.m. 1. Acquisition is what a maintenance phase stops doing.

Here is our judgement. The decision to name is the city council's: the direction, as staff described it to the Parks, Trails and Recreation Committee on Nov. 4, to hold off on a Bonneville Shoreline Trail connection to Alpine 1. It is a defensible instinct applied without the document that should govern it. We argued on Nov. 4 that Draper sets no open-space target and no acquisition line; this is what that gap looks like when a specific mile arrives. With no standard, the answer depends on who asks.

Three changes would settle it, none needing a bond. Put the connection on a council agenda, vote it up or down, and minute it; if the answer is no, amend the 2016 plan and delete the East Hollows action, because a plan that lists a trail staff have been told to refuse is a plan nobody follows. Set an open-space level of service, as the 2023 plan set one for parks, and apply it on both sides of the ridge, so that "mostly benefits Alpine" becomes arithmetic. And build the Draper half: the Suncrest Drive crossing is the city's to construct and already in its plan 4, and a phase-one alignment reaching the Fort Canyon trailhead rather than a subdivision edge would show whether the interest is a trail or an amenity for a developer.

The committee has asked for a joint session with the council 1. None appears on the council's calendar; the next meeting is Nov. 17, with no agenda posted 10. Somebody should put it on paper. Draper's mountain was assembled by councils that bought when the market was broken: 1,021 acres of Corner Canyon, then 2,400 acres of Suncrest after its developer went bankrupt 3. A mile of trail on ground the city mostly owns, along a route its own plan tells it to complete, is not that risk.