Living in Cottam Bench

Cottam Bench is one of the small subdivisions in Bloomington Hills, an older residential part of southeast St. George. It sits on the higher ground just west of River Road, near the St. George Golf Club, about a mile and a half north of Brigham Road. Homes face Point Drive, and the streets wind through the area the way they do all through Bloomington Hills, with a lived-in, grown-in feel.

It looks different from the newer builder subdivisions across the valley. The homes went up in the 1990s, the trees have had thirty years to fill in, and the lots are large for St. George. The catch is walking: you will drive to the grocery store and for errands. That is easy here, because River Road and the I-15 Brigham Road interchange are both a short drive out.

From Exit 4, the whole region is within reach. St. George Regional Hospital is a short drive north up River Road, and the airport is down at the south end. You are buying a settled home on a big lot in an established part of town, not a brand-new floor plan.

Cottam Bench is an established 1990s subdivision. The homes are mostly single-story ramblers, all single-family, with attached two-car garages and yards that are generous by today's standards. One county record gives a useful benchmark: a representative Point Drive home, a single-story built in 1993, about 1,586 square feet, on a lot of about 0.38 acres.

Do not treat that one record as the top or the bottom of the range. It shows what the area was built for, and homes here vary in size, updates and condition after three decades of owners. What ties them together is the land. These are big lots, and that changes how you value a home here compared with a newer subdivision where the house fills most of the lot.

Cottam Bench is small and few homes sell, so I do not trust neighborhood averages here. One or two sales cannot show an honest price. I start from the wider Bloomington Hills resale market, then make big adjustments for lot size, updates and condition. Check everything against the live listings, because when so few homes sell, the right two or three sales of similar homes matter more than any average.

Cottam Bench is served by the Washington County School District. For a Point Drive address, the current assignment starts with Bloomington Hills Elementary (grades K-5) on East Brigham Road. Students then go on to Desert Hills Intermediate (grades 6-7), Desert Hills Middle (grades 8-9), and Desert Hills High (grades 10-12).

Boundaries in a growing district can shift, so check the current assignment for any home you are serious about directly with the district, not from a map. For outside school data, GreatSchools and Niche both publish numbers you can weigh yourself.

Get one thing straight before you shop, because it trips up buyers and online estimates alike: St. George has three different subdivisions called Cottam. They share a name because Cottam is a St. George pioneer family, and two of their historic homes are on the Washington County historic register. But they are not the same neighborhood, the same age, or the same price.

Cottam Bench is this page: the established 1990s subdivision on large lots in Bloomington Hills. Cottam Cove is a separate, newer rambler community elsewhere in town, built by a production builder (one that builds from a few repeated plans) with its own current floor plans. Cottam Fields is separate again. A search that lumps them together will give you a price that belongs to a different subdivision.

So when a listing or an automated value says "Cottam," I check which one first. If you saw a number online that made Cottam Bench look like new construction, odds are you were reading Cottam Cove. Getting the name right comes first here.