When the smoke cleared from the summer of 2005, the ground where Geneva Steel had stood for sixty years was a field of rubble and slag along the shore of Utah Lake. That November a developer, Anderson Geneva, bought 1,750 acres of it for $46.8 million. The question was what would come next.
Power first
The first answer was power. In April 2005 construction began on the Lake Side Power Plant, a natural gas plant built partly on 22 acres of the old mill site. It was finished in 2007. Vineyard's mayor, Rulon Gammon, had worked to bring it to town, because with the mill closed the town needed a new way to pay its bills.
Keeping the name
Next came a plan. Anderson Development named the project @Geneva, keeping the old name on purpose. Gerald Anderson said advisors had told him to drop it, but there was a legacy, a community history built on Geneva, and they could not walk away from it.
Utah Valley University joined in. The university began buying land in Vineyard in 2011 and in 2014 bought 125 acres of the Geneva site for a West Campus.
The rush
Then the people came, faster than anyone expected. From 2014 to 2015 Vineyard grew 417 percent, more than any city in America. On March 13, 2015, the Megaplex at Geneva opened on the old mill ground with 13 screens and the first IMAX screen in Utah County. In 2016 Vineyard became a city.
There is a legacy, a community history built on Geneva.Gerald Anderson, Anderson Development
On August 12, 2022, FrontRunner trains began stopping at the new Vineyard station on Market Street. The downtown would be built around it.
Utah City
On August 29, 2023, the developers, Flagship Companies and Woodbury Corporation, announced a name for the 700 acre heart of the old site: Utah City. The plan calls for a walkable downtown, with homes, shops and offices built around the train station, and the Greenline, a chain of parks and public spaces running from the station to the Utah Lake shore.
The first pieces opened one after another. Ground was broken for Bella's Market, a local grocery on Main Street, on February 12, 2025, and it opened in November 2025. Parks and the first blocks of homes followed.
The furnaces are gone and the stacks have fallen. On the same ground, in the shadow of Mount Timpanogos, a downtown is rising. The ladle by the roundabout and the name on the street signs, Geneva, still remember what was here.