Ogden Frightmare: Date With Dr. Frankenstein

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I would share something REALLY scary.  Are you ready?  You may want to put your hands on your eyes and peek through the cracks.....

Here is a really creepy map of Ogden's zoning in 1990.  Sometime in the 50's and up until 1990, the city hired Dr. Frankenstein to do the zoning plan for this pleasant neighborhood of mostly single family houses.  He ghoulishly zoned it like this:

R-2 Allows for Duplexes OOH!

R-3 Allows for Triplexes  EEEK!

R-5 Allows for up to 30 Units!  AAAAAAAAAH!!!!

This zoning plan worked as well as a bunch of dead-mismatched-body-parts sown together and then jump-started with lightning...just like we would expect from such a devious plan. Yikes!

A great example is the house next door to mine.  It is a Victorian home cut up into a 5-plex.  Definitely the work of Dr. Frankenstein.  It is still haunted by the R-5 zoning from yester-decade.

Fortunately, the zoning nightmare began to change in 1991 and, just last week, the Trolley District Neighborhood Plan was approved by the city council.  More and more these kind of zoning nightmares are becoming a thing of the past.