The foundation was laid last month for a new, long-range growth and transportation plan for the west side of the Salt Lake Valley and northern Utah County. Now, residents are being invited to help start laying the bricks.

Beginning later this month, a series of five public workshops will be held in Lehi, Riverton, West Jordan, West Valley City and Pleasant Grove. The purpose: to allow those communities -- and residents from the surrounding areas -- to provide input for what is now being called the Mountain View Corridor.

"We'll have very good data. People will actually be able to see what is in each region now, and choose the types of development they want to see," consultant John Fregonese told a group of government officials, landholders and conservationists earlier this week at the E Center during a meeting of the corridor plan's stakeholders.

From the workshops, he added, a digitalized "virtual future" of the area will be created, giving planners a sense of what is possible for the corridor area -- which extends roughly from Interstate 80 to the northern end of Utah Lake and west of Bangerter Highway.

The Mountain View Corridor's "Growth Choices" plan, sponsored by Envision Utah, is part of a larger environmental impact study (EIS) of the area being conducted by the Utah Department of Transportation. UDOT officials say the plan won't be officially integrated into the EIS, but it will parallel it and could influence the EIS.

Among the issues to be addressed by the plan are transportation and growth efficiency, housing needs, environmental concerns and tax and revenue questions. But what planners are hoping to glean from the public workshops are "scenarios" for things like the cost of infrastructure, what kind of housing mixes work best, locations for potential retail and how much open space residents want to preserve.

Fregonese says no one should fear the process. Nothing will be set in stone after the workshops. It is more about the range of possibilities. "Scenarios are stories about what the future might look like; they're not plans," he said.

The consultant adds that the workshops will also be designed so that residents can understand the process -- though planners will also be on hand to smooth the workshops along. "The average person should be able to get through it in three hours and get good results," said Fregonese.