Rather than flattening hills or restructuring the terrain, Third Cadence embraced its contours. The plan preserves 214 acres (87 ha) of native open space within and around a series of valleys that the Wood family ranched and dry-farmed for generations, forming what became a backbone for the new neighborhoods.
The Mountain West stands in a pivotal moment. Rapid population increase, worsening drought cycles, and pressure on municipal resources are forcing communities to rethink how and where new growth should occur. Few regions face this tension more clearly than Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, where foothill development, limited water supplies, a shrinking Great Salt Lake, and outdated zoning models often collide.
But what if development could work with the land instead of against it?
What if a community could preserve open space, dramatically reduce water use, adapt to complex topography, and still meet market demand?
It can, and it does at Terraine, a 634-acre (256 ha) planned community in West Jordan, Utah. Led by master developer Third Cadence, the project is emerging as a case study in how land planning, native ecology, and market feasibility can align to create a new way of living in the arid Mountain West.
“We didn’t want to fight with the land,” says Ty McCutcheon, cofounder of Third Cadence. “We wanted the land to tell us what to do. That mindset changed everything—how we approached water, landscaping, open space, even the way the roads curve through the foothills.”
A site shaped by geology, history, and place
Terraine occupies the transitional slopes between the Oquirrh Mountains and the west edge of the Salt Lake Valley—a landscape of native grasses, drainages, and panoramic views of the Wasatch Range. The site is breathtaking yet challenging to build on due to the topography, sensitive habitats, and required infrastructure.
Rather than flattening hills or restructuring the terrain, Third Cadence embraced its contours. The plan preserves 214 acres (87 ha) of native open space within and around a series of valleys that the Wood family ranched and dry-farmed for generations, forming what became a backbone for the new neighborhoods. The Ribbonwalk, which rings the entire community, is part of a 35 mile (56 km) network of trails that connect the neighborhoods through natural gullies, wildlife corridors, and restored foothill vegetation.
Look east from Terraine, and the stunning peaks of the Wasatch Mountains dominate the horizon. What people don’t see is perhaps more striking: the densely packed valley floor. “You feel like you’re tucked away in the mountains,” says Marcus Pulsipher, a landscape architect with LOCI in Salt Lake City, who helped design Terraine. “It reframes what foothill development can be.”
That reframing resonated deeply with members of the Wood family, which owned the land for many decades. They selected Third Cadence because of the firm’s commitment to creating a site-responsive community that honors the family’s legacy and Utah’s agricultural and ecological heritage.
Changing the development playbook
Terraine’s DNA includes lessons learned from Daybreak, a short drive to the south. The principals of Third Cadence spent years there helping advance ideas that were once considered radical: alley-loaded homes, a mix of housing types, walkable blocks, front porches.
“Daybreak had to prove those ideas could work,” McCutcheon says. “People said, ‘That’ll never sell.’ But it did, and wildly so.”
At Terraine, the challenge wasn’t only public perception. It was rewriting municipal frameworks and shifting homebuilder culture.
Although the property was already subject to a foothill overlay zone, those regulations would have permitted some development in the foothills. The vision for Terraine’s master plan was to protect the perimeter foothills entirely as open space and to cluster development in the valleys.
Zoning options in West Jordan City did not accommodate a foothill development of this complexity, though. Third Cadence worked with city staff and elected leaders for more than a year to create the Planned Community Hillside Zone, addressing concerns around grading, wildfire, drainage, open space, and long-term stewardship.
“The city is proud of what we have been able to accomplish,” McCutcheon says. “They want to see more of what we’re doing.”
A new ask of homebuilders
Homebuilders, often risk-averse and focused on hitting marketable price points, faced a steep learning curve—literally.
Terraine requires:
- Adapting housing products to slopes rather than cutting flat pads
- Including a selection of architectural styles rooted in Western mountain mining towns
- Following a detailed pattern book that guides architectural language, materials, and landscape treatment
“We partnered with our builders, shared the vision for Terraine, and together we made it a reality,” says landscape architect Amie MacPhee of Cultivate, who collaborates with LOCI on Terraine. “We had to say, ‘You can’t just stamp out what you’ve done elsewhere. This site demands a different response.’”
A new ask of homebuyers
The new Planned Community Hillside Zone permitted a range of smaller yard sizes, allowing the plan to aggregate that acreage into a larger park and open space system. To achieve Terraine’s goal of conserving 35 percent of the total project site as open space, Third Cadence and West Jordan created a local public improvement district (PID) to sell $25 million in bonds during the first phase at a 5.625 percent interest rate to make feasible the protection of this additional land for perpetual preservation as open space. Bonds are sold in tranches as neighborhoods come online and are repaid by fees charged to homeowners.
Owners of single-family homes pay an assessment fee of $9,850; owners of townhomes pay $5,790. Payments are made monthly over 30 years—$60.43 per month for single-family homes; $35.53 per month for townhomes—and can be prepaid at any time. The fee amounts to 1 to 2 percent of a home’s purchase price.
“The PID fee is essentially a homeowner’s share of preserving and maintaining Terraine’s legacy of open space,” McCutcheon says, noting that feedback to the fee, once explained, has been positive. That response mirrors upfront market research showing that homeowners are willing to pay more to preserve surrounding open space.
What’s more, the 214 acres (87 ha) of bond-funded open space does not include school and church properties, which will add more open areas.
Creating a community-scale ‘Utah garden’
If the architecture challenges traditional suburban models, the landscape pushes even further.
“For years I’ve asked myself, ‘What is a Utah garden?’” says Pulsipher. “A lot of people see a sagebrush landscape and think it’s all brown and scrubby. I think it’s beautiful. The challenge was translating that love into something functional, ornamental, and resilient.”
Given Utah’s—and the region’s—long-term water conservation goals to protect the drought-stricken Great Salt Lake Basin drainage area, the Terraine team set an ambitious target: reduce outdoor water use by at least 70 percent, relative to a conventional subdivision. The goal here wasn’t austere minimalism; it was beauty with backbone.
“The landscape should survive if you had to turn off irrigation tomorrow,” Pulsipher says. “Maybe it gets a little crisp in late summer, but it still looks intentional and local.”
Third Cadence worked with the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District to reduce Terraine’s potential water use by replacing a “lawn-first” template with what the district calls the first Localscapes water-efficient community in Utah.
“Terraine is a standout example of what sustainable landscaping can achieve on a large scale,” says Conservation Garden Park Manager Shawun Moser, who works with the water district. “This project not only conserves valuable water resources but also promotes a thriving ecosystem that benefits our local pollinators, wildlife, and community.”
Although the property’s history as a wheat farm didn’t translate directly to contemporary public spaces, the design team did draw upon Utah’s broader agricultural traditions to shape Terraine’s landscape.
Features include:
- Orchards woven into meadows and neighborhood parks
- Rows of Lombardy poplars at the entry, inspired by pioneer-era windbreaks
- Drought-resilient understory plants grown through long-term contracts with nurseries
Solutions for scaling
Plant palettes that provide visual interest and color throughout the year and that meet the water conservation and aesthetic objectives of Terraine required identifying a broader number of plant species than are typically available at local garden and home improvement stores.
In addition to expanding the number of plant species, making them available to hundreds of homes and related community spaces each year required a complete reworking of the supply chain.
“When you need 500 of a plant, and the local nursery has three, you have to rethink the supply chain,” MacPhee notes. “We had to plan years ahead, signing contracts with two local nurseries to grow what we needed so that it would be ready when development and construction began.”
The two nurseries began planting rows of trees and shrubs—including bigtooth maple, lanceleaf cottonwood, Utah serviceberry, and woods rose—two years before they would be needed. Perennials such as white yarrow, firecracker penstemon, and fire chalice, and grasses such as little bluestem and alkali sacaton were also grown.
Designing for scarcity: fire, water, and the wild edge
Because Terraine is a foothill project adjacent to preserved lands, fire resilience was a constant consideration. Thus, the strategy extended beyond a plant palette.
“We embedded defensible space into the plan itself,” Pulsipher explains. A 10-foot paved pathway at the wildland interface provides fire crews with access and separates them from native vegetation. Trails double as firebreaks.
Grades also informed home design. “In some places,” McCutcheon says, “you enter at street level and step into the backyard three floors up. That flipped how builders think about entries and outdoor rooms.”
Creating a family to design a community
Designers MacPhee and LOCI worked at multiple scales simultaneously: visioning, pattern books, streetscapes, parks, and implementation. What stands out, however, is the unusually collaborative relationship with the developer.
“On many projects, designers get marching orders without knowing why decisions were made,” Pulsipher says. “Here, we’re in the room for the big moments. That alignment keeps the project on course.”
MacPhee agrees: “It’s easy for developers to talk about stewardship and community. It’s harder to stay committed when challenges arise. Here, the team has followed through.”
Programming as infrastructure
Physical design alone doesn’t create community. It creates a stage. Someone must direct the scene, though.
At Terraine, that job belongs to the personnel at Cohere, the community partner leading activation, programming, and resident engagement. “They ensure events happen,” McCutcheon says. “That they’re organized, inclusive, and rooted in the community’s values.”
Designers, meanwhile, focused on building spaces that are flexible and durable enough to evolve for decades.
“You want places that support specific uses but are loose enough to be reinvented over time,” Pulsipher says. “As designers, we have to let go and let the community shape its own future.”
The lantern system, trails
One of Terraine’s signature ideas is its network of “lanterns”—neighborhood landmarks inspired by the way that urbanist Kevin Lynch describes how people mentally map cities.
It began with a simple need: Guide visitors beyond the model homes, toward the welcome center and central meadow. “We wanted a beacon,” McCutcheon says, “a glassy, glowing jewel that draws you uphill.”
That idea expanded into a system of:
- Neighborhood landmarks
- Future homes for a library, gardening center, café, rec outfitter, pool, and amphitheater
- Highly visible, community-defining anchors
Crucially, lanterns are conceived as tools for future co-creation.
“As the community grows, new lanterns will be co-authored with residents,” Pulsipher says. “They’re flexible enough to evolve as the community and its needs evolve.”
Terraine’s network of trails also distinguishes the project by connecting residents to the foothills—and eventually to regional systems such as the Bonneville Shoreline Trail.
“It’s not just a loop around the neighborhood,” MacPhee says. “The idea is, you can walk from your front door straight into the hills.”
The experience of moving through Terraine—its curves, views, shifting grades—is intentionally unlike typical suburban environments, where streets override topography. Here, the land leads.
A unique project, but not a one-off
Terraine’s slopes, history, and adjacency to preserved open space make it distinct. The team is adamant, though: The approach is replicable.
“One concern was that people would say, ‘You can only do this here,’” Pulsipher says. “We want to prove that’s not true.”
What’s replicable is the mindset:
- Respect the land’s form
- Confront scarcity—design for long-term water and climate realities
- Honor local legacy
- Invest in community with programming and governance
- Curate partners who will change their practices, not just their marketing
“I hope everybody copies what we’re doing,” McCutcheon says. “If we’re going to keep living here with less water and a drying Great Salt Lake, we need more communities like this. That’s how we survive—and thrive—as a region.”
A new way of living in the Mountain West
Terraine is still in its early stages. Homes are rising. Orchards are taking root. Lanterns are illuminating neighborhood centers. Trails are giving residents reasons to walk, pause, and immerse themselves in the foothill landscape.
Yet the project’s significance extends well beyond West Jordan. It signals a broader redefinition of how the Mountain West can grow in an era defined by scarcity—and by possibility.
“We approached the site with respect for the stewardship of the land,” McCutcheon says. “And we asked how to maximize the experience of this place.
“That’s an approach you can take anywhere.”
