When Layton turned down 2 shopping centers

                                          A Davis County Clipper newspaper ad from 19666.

LAYTON City is a regional retail powerhouse today, but it wasn’t always so and Layton’s past leaders actually dismissed some large retail proposals in the early 1970s.

“Layton Council rejects two shopping centers” was a May 24, 1973 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

At that time, Layton City had very limited shopping developments.

Layton Councilman Phillip Eckersley, made both motions to reject the 1973 proposals, in hopes the City would approve its conditional use and zoning ordinances to better control such shopping developments.

Councilman Golden Sill had voted in favor of the two developments.

One development was on Antelope Drive, where K-Mart eventually located. The other was the eventual Fort Lane Shopping Center, at Gentile and Fort Lane Streets.

                                            The Layton K-Mart closed in 2017.

-In the same Standard-Examiner issue, a story stated that a May 25 meeting in the Layton High Auditorium would discuss the plans for future hospitals in Davis County. At that time, the County had just the small South Davis Community Hospital in Bountiful.

The Davis County Commission was at the time considering private proposals to construct hospitals in both Bountiful and Clearfield.

(In the end, Lakeview Hospital opened in Bountiful in 1974 and Davis Hospital in Layton in 1976.)