Development management for Utah County projects
Development management runs a real-estate project from raw ground to occupancy — due diligence, entitlement, consultant team, budget, construction, and delivery — on behalf of a landowner or investor who doesn’t develop for a living. Grandview provides that role across Utah County and Salt Lake County as a licensed DOPL B100 general contractor, so the person managing your proforma also knows what the line items cost to build.
When development management is the right engagement
The tell is the starting point. If your project begins with a parcel and a question — what can this land carry, what will the city approve, does the deal pencil — you need development management. The engagement starts before there’s anything to build and ends when the building is occupied and the lender is closed out.
If a builder is already under contract and you need someone reading their pay applications and walking their site, that’s owner’s representation in its standard form — or, narrower still, construction oversight and QA monitoring if you only need eyes on workmanship. An institution running a budgeted facility project on land it already occupies wants capital project management, because there’s no land deal or entitlement risk to manage. And a family building one house wants private-client representation, not a development manager.
Our typical development-management client owns dirt: a family weighing townhomes against selling a long-held Utah County parcel, an investor group assembling a small multifamily deal, a business owner who bought land for a building he doesn’t know how to deliver. The deal is theirs. The delivery becomes ours to run.
What a development manager actually runs
Construction is the fourth or fifth phase of a development, not the first. The sequence we manage, sized to the deal:
- Due diligence. Before earnest money goes hard: zoning check, utility availability, access, title exceptions, and a geotechnical read on the ground. Much of the Wasatch Front sits on expansive clay or collapsible bench soils, and the jump from spread footings to over-excavation with structural fill belongs in the proforma before closing, not in a change order after.
- Concept and proforma. Testing what the parcel yields against what it costs: unit count, parking, site coverage, and a construction budget built from current local pricing rather than a per-square-foot rule of thumb. This is where our site feasibility work plugs in directly.
- Entitlement. Rezone or site-plan applications, planning-commission and council hearings, and the conditions of approval that follow — managed on a schedule that reflects the actual city, not a generic one.
- Design and consultant team. Contracting the architect, civil, structural, and geotech under agreements that hold them to the proforma, and reviewing drawings for cost as they develop — not after they’re done.
- Construction and draws. Bidding or negotiating the construction contract, then running the administration your lender requires: draw packages, inspections, lien waivers, and budget reconciliation each cycle.
- Delivery. Certificates of occupancy, punch list, warranties, HOA or CC&R turnover where the project creates one, and lender closeout.
We see dependencies before they become delays.
How long does entitlement take along the Wasatch Front?
It depends on the city more than the project. Fast-growth cities like Lehi, Saratoga Springs, and Eagle Mountain carry heavy application volumes, so a site-plan approval that clears one hearing cycle in an established Provo or Orem process can take several cycles there — we confirm the current queue with the specific planning department before the proforma assumes a start date. A rezone with a general-plan amendment is a different animal from a permitted-use site plan, and the two carry very different carrying-cost risk on the land loan.
Conditions of approval are where inexperienced owners get hurt. Off-site improvements — a turn lane, a waterline upsize, park-strip landscaping — arrive attached to the approval and land in your budget whether or not anyone priced them. In HOA-dense newer developments, a private architectural-review layer sits on top of the city’s, with no statutory deadline at all. We track every condition from the hearing minutes into the budget the week it’s imposed.
What does development management cost in Utah?
As a ballpark planning number, full-cycle development management typically runs about 3–5% of total development cost on smaller Utah projects, or a monthly retainer during the entitlement phase when construction cost isn’t yet known. Phase-limited engagements — due diligence only, or entitlement only — are usually flat-fee. Every fee is set in writing before we start; none of these figures is a quote.
What moves the number: how entitled the land already is (a rezone costs more to manage than a permitted use), the number of consultants and agencies in play, lender reporting requirements, and whether the engagement includes the construction phase. The fee reads higher than an owner’s rep fee because the scope is longer — it starts a year or more before the first footing.
Questions we actually get
Do you take an equity stake in the deal?
No. Development management is fee-for-service — you keep the land, the upside, and the decisions. That’s deliberate: a manager with equity has an incentive to push a marginal deal forward, and the most valuable thing we can tell you at due diligence is sometimes “don’t buy it.”
Can you build the project too, or only manage it?
Either. As a licensed B100 general contractor we can carry the construction contract ourselves, or bid it out and manage whichever builder wins — with license status confirmed at dopl.utah.gov before anyone is shortlisted. If we bid, our bid gets leveled the same as everyone else’s.
I inherited land and don’t know if it’s developable. Where do we start?
With a due-diligence package, not drawings. Zoning, utilities, access, soils, and a rough yield-and-cost test typically answer the develop-or-sell question in a few weeks for a flat fee. Some landowners come out ahead selling entitled lots instead of building — better to learn that up front than mid-project.
What does the lender actually require during construction?
Most Utah construction lenders require a draw package each cycle: an itemized request against the approved budget, an inspection, updated title, and lien waivers from the builder and subs. We assemble and reconcile that package so draws fund on time — a stalled draw stops a job faster than weather does.
Where this fits
Development management is the widest-scope engagement in our planning and project management family — owner’s representation stretched backward to the land purchase and forward to lender closeout. If your question is narrower than a whole development, start at the owner’s representation overview and we’ll size the engagement to match.
Tell us about the parcel
Send the address, the county parcel number, or just the idea. We reply within a couple of hours during business hours — a day at most — with a straight read on what the ground can carry and what it would take to deliver.