Matson Hill Townhomes
20 for-sale brick townhomes · Salt Lake City, UT
Matson Hill is 20 for-sale townhomes going up at 910 East 400 South in Salt Lake City, on the corner where the Village Inn used to be. Urban Alfandre is the developer, building it through its for-sale home company, Kensington Home Company. We are the architect of record, and we worked on the design with architect Dan Morales.
The site is 0.76 acres and it falls about 10 feet from one corner to the other. We drew a lot of site plans on this one. The first townhome layout fit 15 homes. The plan we and the owner ended up with fits 20 on the same land, in three buildings around a shared auto court.
The look comes from old brick rowhomes: tall proportions, a steady rhythm of doors and windows, stoops up to the front door. We kept those bones and gave them a cleaner, more current finish, so the homes should still look right a long time from now.
Project Stats
Status | Under Construction - first homes late 2026
Location | 910 East 400 South, Salt Lake City, UT
Building Size | 52,713 SF
Site Size | 0.76 acres
Number of Units | 20 for-sale townhomes
Unit Types | 5
Buildings | 3 (two four-story, one three-story)
Garages | Tandem two-car garages in 19 of 20 homes
Construction Type | Wood frame; IBC R-3 (Buildings 1 and 2), IRC (Building 3)
Zoning | TSA-UN-T
Design Schedule | September 2024 - August 2025
Permitting | August - December 2025
Construction Schedule | February 2026 - 2027 (est.)
Zoning and Site Context
Matson Hill sits in Salt Lake City's TSA-UN-T zone (Transit Station Area, Urban Neighborhood, Townhouse). The zone is set up for medium-density attached housing, and it asks for an active, walkable street in exchange. We think that is the right trade. Building on infill sites like this one, where the streets, utilities and transit are already in place, makes a lot more sense than pushing new homes farther out of town. People get to live close to jobs, schools, the TRAX line and the stores they use every day, which means fewer car trips, more customers for local businesses and more riders on transit. It is one of the better tools a city has for the housing shortage, and it does not cost the neighborhood its character.
The site is on the corner of 900 East and 400 South, and the zoning shaped the buildings early. The code allows up to 50 feet of height, does not require a corner side yard along 900 East, and makes the side and rear setbacks bigger as the buildings get taller. Working those setbacks against the height is a big part of why this ended up as three separate buildings instead of one long one.
The design standards also ask for frequent front doors, limits on blank walls, an active ground floor and plenty of articulation on the facades. Those all happen to be things good townhomes do anyway, so we leaned into them.
Beating the Rezoning
In late 2024 the city was consolidating the zoning along this part of 400 South. Under the new rules the corner would have needed a much larger commercial space, and a big storefront is a hard thing to fit into a row of for-sale townhomes. We got a complete application in under the existing TSA-UN-T zone in March 2025, which locked the project in under the rules it was designed for.
About the Design
Many Site Plans
Urban Alfandre first asked us for a quick yield study on the Village Inn site in September 2024. We tested condos over podium parking under both the current zone and the zone the city was proposing. The condos did not work at the sale prices the project needed, so it turned into a townhome project.
From there we explored a number of site plans, including rows of homes along the two streets, a zigzag plan that picked up a couple of extra homes, and a plan that turned the homes sideways to get bigger roof decks. Ultimately we and the owner decided on three buildings of six, seven and seven homes around a shared auto court. The two buildings on the streets are four stories. The third sits at the back of the site and is three stories, under 30 feet, next to the smaller homes to the southeast.
A Sloping Site
Townhomes have a lot of doors. Every home has its own front door and its own garage door, and every one of them has to meet the ground at the right height. With about 10 feet of fall across the site, that meant working out the grading and the floor levels home by home. The owner chose raised stoops on the street side, which lift the front doors up off the sidewalk and take some of the slope out of the grading.
Tandem Garages
Nineteen of the 20 homes have a tandem two-car garage, with one car parked behind the other. A tandem garage is narrower than a side-by-side one, and that narrower width is a big part of how the site got to 20 homes. It also covers the parking the zoning requires without a surface lot. The site stays residential instead of turning into a sea of drive aisles, and there is still room for fire access, trash and service areas, and the required landscape buffers.
That keeps the focus on front doors and walking, which is what you want in transit-oriented development on an urban infill site.
Project Description
The exterior is a balance between a traditional townhome and a cleaner, modern one. There are a lot of homes on this site, so the buildings are broken down with strong vertical proportions and a steady rhythm to keep them feeling residential.
Along the streets each home gets its own front door, its own window bays and a vertical break from its neighbor. The goal was the "rowhome" feel: you should read individual homes stitched together, not one long building. The proportions are familiar enough to fit the neighborhood, and the details, materials and layout keep it from feeling like a period piece. It is a lot of density for an urban corner, but it still reads as a street of houses.
Interior Planning and Layout
The floor plans are simple. The ground floor has the garage, the entry, and either a flex room or a guest bedroom, depending on the home. The main living floor is in the middle of the house, and the bedrooms are above it for privacy.
The main floor is one open space for the kitchen, dining and living room, which gets more daylight in and makes it feel bigger than it is. Upstairs the bedrooms are private but easy to get to, and the roof decks and balconies add outdoor space that people will actually use. The plans should work for a lot of different households, and for the same household as it changes over time.
Unit Types
There are five unit types spread across the three buildings. Which type goes where depends on its spot on the site, which street it faces and how you get to the front door. Together they give buyers a real range of homes while the buildings still look like they belong together.
Unit Type A
Type A is the biggest home in the project, on the northwest corner of the site. The ground floor has a primary suite, a laundry room and a two-car garage. The second floor is the main living level, with an open kitchen, dining and living room. The third floor has three more bedrooms, and the fourth floor adds a fifth bedroom that opens onto a roof deck of about 350 square feet. It is the most flexible home in the project.
Unit Types B and C
Types B and C make up most of the homes, and they share the same basic layout. The second floor has the kitchen, dining and living room together in one open space. These units have three bedrooms (two on the third floor and one on the fourth), plus an office that can be a fourth bedroom in Type C. The top floor opens onto a private roof deck.
Unit Type D
Type D has a flex room on the ground floor in place of a bedroom, so the owner can use it however they want. The second floor is the main living level with an open kitchen, dining and living room, and there are two bedrooms on the third floor. Outdoor space is balconies on both the second and third floors.
Unit Type E
There is only one Type E. It is a Type D with a full bedroom on the ground floor instead of the flex room. That home sits partly on the street, and a bedroom there puts a lived-in room on the sidewalk instead of a flex room. The rest of the house matches Type D: main living on the second floor with a balcony, two bedrooms and another balcony on the third.
Working With the City
Townhomes on this corner needed more than a building permit. The city's TSA scoring sent the project to Design Review and a Planned Development, which is how we asked for smaller side and rear yards, three buildings on one site, and homes that do not front a public street. We met with the community council (at a neighbor's home) and with the area's City Council member. The biggest worries were pedestrian safety on 400 South and what would go next to the smaller homes to the southeast. That is the building we kept to three stories and under 30 feet.
Planning staff were initially against a 5-foot east setback. We showed them the same open space moved to the west side, where the stoops face the street, and they agreed. The Planning Commission approved the project in July 2025.
Fire Access and Street Trees
We worked through fire access directly with Salt Lake City Fire: a firefighter path along the east side yard, a smaller fire riser room than first required, and keeping the existing street trees on a corner where the aerial access rules would have pushed them out. New street trees are limited in height instead.
A Code Path Agreed Early
This part gets a little building code nerdy. Each home is separated from its neighbors by a fire wall, which means the homes are structurally separate, so the city treats every townhome as its own building that just happens to sit really close to the next one. That puts Buildings 1 and 2 under the IBC as R-3 instead of R-2, and the three-story Building 3 under the residential code. We worked this out with the building official and plans examiner before the permit set went in (not every city will agree to it). There are no elevators, and keeping Building 3 under 30 feet meant it did not need an aerial fire lane. The building permit was approved in December 2025. There is more on how we handle entitlements and code work on our services page.
Urban Alfandre and Kensington Home Company knew what they wanted from the start: brick, deep-set windows and stoops, on a busy corner. We worked on the design with architect Dan Morales. Wilding Engineering did the civil work and the survey, and Dojo Construction is building it.
Thanks to everyone who has worked on Matson Hill. Their names and links are below.
A Collaborative Effort
Design Team
Collaborating Architect | Dan Morales
Civil | Wilding Engineering
Structural | York Engineering
MEP | Royal Engineering
Landscape | Landform Design Group
Interior Design | Vida Design Group
Construction Team
General Contractor | Dojo Construction
Stakeholders
Developer | Urban Alfandre
Owner | Kensington Home Company
Architecture Project Management
Architecture Team
Principal in Charge & Architect of Record | Jarod Hall
Project Manager | Tyler Froelich
Designer | Stephanie Davis
Support Staff | Ethan Barley, Rebecca Ruby, Marin Smith
Project Scope
Site Studies & Options | We started with a yield study of the whole site, tested condos under two zoning districts, then worked through a series of townhome site plans with the owner.
Entitlements | We took the project through the TSA review, Design Review, a Planned Development and the preliminary subdivision, including the community council meetings and the Planning Commission hearing.
Building Design (SD, DD, CD) | Full building design services, from the first schematic layout through design development and a complete set of construction documents, including the building code approach agreed with the city.
Construction Administration (CA) | We are with the project through construction, answering questions from the field and reviewing submittals.
Looking Ahead
Kensington has since come back to us for help with a number of tricky entitlement and building code issues.
The extra homes on Matson Hill did not come from a bigger building. They came from a site plan that worked with the slope, a zoning deadline we did not miss, and a code approach the city agreed to before the permit set went in. If you have an infill site and want to know how many homes it can really hold, we would be glad to talk it through. There is more of our townhome work on the townhome page, including Emeril.