Hooper City Council voted 3-2 to approve a development agreement for Hooper Crossing, a Smith's-anchored shopping center and housing project led by outgoing Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams, despite the city's planning commission recommending the agreement be denied. The council also approved a general plan amendment and voted 4-1 to approve the rezone, attaching more than 20 conditions to the deal.
The roughly 52-acre project sits at 5500 South and 4700 West in Hooper, zoned for 40,000-square-foot lots, and is slated to include a grocery store of roughly 100,000 square feet, a fuel center and additional pad sites, according to Building Salt Lake. An earlier Smith's Marketplace version of the project was studied in 2025 before being withdrawn that fall, and the site's zoning exhibit lists Smith's as the client. Terra Strada LLC, the applicant entity behind the project, is owned and operated by Adams, a fifth-generation Layton resident, as a Layton-based real estate and development firm, according to his own campaign website.
The approval lands less than four months after Adams lost his June Republican primary, a loss confirmed by Ballotpedia; Hoodline attributes to Utah Political Watch the distinction that Adams was the first sitting Utah Senate president in 24 years to lose a reelection bid. Political analysts and news reports have tied that defeat largely to voter backlash over Adams' role in advancing the controversial Stratos artificial intelligence data center project in Box Elder County, as reported by Newsweek. Adams will leave the Utah Senate at year's end.
Planners Objected, Council Overruled Them
Hooper's planning commission recommended denying the new agreement as currently written at its September 9 meeting, citing drafting errors and missing exhibits, the Building Salt Lake report notes. The council nonetheless approved the packet version as modified by conditions read into the record by Malcolm Jenkins, moving forward over the commission's objection.
Among those conditions, the council capped new homes at five per acre, meaning Hooper Crossing will include no more than 125 new homes, with as many as 50 townhomes allowed. The council also required at least 85 percent of new homes to be owner-occupied, up from the 60 percent initially proposed, and prohibited any home construction before Smith's receives its building permit. The council additionally replaced the original master plan with an alternative layout submitted by Terra Strada showing 71 townhomes.
A Local Fight Over Growth
Public division over Terra Strada's plans in Hooper dates back to at least June 2025, when residents held heated debates at city council meetings over proposed higher residential density, zoning changes and potential tax-increment financing, according to Citizen Portal. The city's council had previously declined to approve rezones without general plan updates, reflecting the ongoing nature of the dispute. Hooper's population was estimated at 9,338 in 2024 and projected to reach 9,637 in 2026, underscoring the growth pressure driving demand for new commercial and residential space in western Weber County.
That pressure isn't unique to Hooper. Nearby West Haven approved site plans in July 2025 for a new Walmart Supercenter, part of a broader wave of commercial expansion rippling across the county's rural communities as grocery chains compete to capture population growth west of Ogden, per KSL.
Sewer Financing Draws Scrutiny From the House Speaker
The same night, the Hooper City Council reconvened as the Hooper City Community Reinvestment Agency and approved a survey resolution defining a proposed Hooper Crossing project area, allowing staff and consultants to draft a project area plan. A reinvestment agency consultant said the survey resolution does not commit the city to tax-increment financing. The development agreement's financing section makes a regional sewer lift station eligible for city help through a reinvestment area, an infrastructure district or impact fees, though later agreements will set the actual amounts of assistance, and no final development agreement yet exists.
The financing question exists because an existing force main already serves 976 homes that never paid an impact fee toward it. Jared Hancock said the replacement project would cost about $1 million less if those 976 homes had paid impact fees, and Hooper City is considering a reinvestment agency partly because it cannot now seek that money from those homeowners, the Building Salt Lake report states.
Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, a Hooper resident, personally testified at the council's September meeting to oppose retail tax-increment incentives, arguing that landowners are often the primary beneficiaries of such subsidies. Schultz, who ran a 2022 bill reining in retail tax-increment incentives, said he would do away with them completely if he could, though he acknowledged some cases require tax increment and did not address Hooper Crossing directly, according to the same report.
Road Funding Still Lags Behind Growth
Transportation infrastructure near the site remains a work in progress. The Utah Department of Transportation opened the initial 16-mile segment of the West Davis Highway, known as SR-177, in January 2024 and began utility preparation in late 2025 for a 2.5-mile extension into West Point due by late 2028; a Weber County extension remains unfunded, and no future route is defined, according to the Standard-Examiner. SR-177 is currently funded only as far as 5500 South and not to 4000 South.
Legal Fight Simmers Alongside the Approval
The approval also arrives amid an unresolved legal dispute stemming from Adams' primary loss. Following that defeat, Adams sent formal cease-and-desist letters in August demanding retractions from four prominent critics, including Utah State Auditor Tina Cannon, under threat of defamation lawsuits over statements about his development ties and official actions, Hoodline previously reported. Cannon has publicly refused to retract her statements.
For now, the 3-2 council vote conditionally approves the development agreement; the revised agreement remains nonfinal, and later financing agreements will set any assistance.
