Off Beat
“Tolle Terrace coming soon to a neighborhood in Utah.”
Turns out, you don’t have to book a seat on the Green Monster for a prime piece of Boston Red Sox real estate.
A Utah neighborhood went viral over the weekend for its Red Sox-themed street names, where discerning homebuyers can pay homage to Sox icons and live on roads with names like Pedroia Street and Varitek Drive.
After first surfacing on Reddit’s Red Sox forum last year, the Herriman subdivision made the rounds on X Saturday after a user noticed the unusual street names while touring a home on Eovaldi Avenue. A screenshotted map of the neighborhood promptly spread like wildfire on social media, and MLB picked up on the bit less than a day later.
“Tolle Terrace coming soon to a neighborhood in Utah ” the league posted Sunday after the Red Sox’ Payton Tolle pitched an immaculate inning against the Kansas City Royals. In another post, MLB joked that infielder Caleb Durbin might also be worthy of his own namesake street.
After all, quirky street names are actually pretty common around the greater Salt Lake region. In Herriman and other nearby cities and towns, you can find neighborhoods whose street names pay homage to “The Lord of the Rings,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe, wines, authors, Arthurian legends, and even “Wayne’s World.”
According to a Herriman spokesperson, developers or home builders will typically propose street names for new subdivision projects, with the local government then signing off. The city’s Red Sox neighborhood can trace its roots to Brandon Parr, a land development project manager with EDGEhomes and lifelong Sox fan.
“I kind of started following [former Red Sox third baseman] Wade Boggs as a kid,” Parr explained in a phone interview. “And he joined the Red Sox in the ’80s, and I’ve been a fan ever since.”
When EDGEhomes began developing the neighborhood in Herriman sometime around 2021 or 2022, Parr saw an opportunity to give a nod to some of his favorite players.
“I thought it was just going to be kind of a fun idea to have something I could see every day that’s related to the Red Sox,” he said. “No one really gave me any pushback. I chose players that I have a connection with as I’ve been watching, and then some historical names like Fisk and Pesky and Remy, just to pay homage to some of the older guys as well.”
There’s a practical explanation for why former Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi made the cut while some of the more well-known franchise icons didn’t.
“I have gotten questions about why Eovaldi, why not, like, Ortiz or Ramirez, and there is a good reason,” Parr said. “I mean, we can’t duplicate names in the city. So like Williams and Ortiz and Ramirez, some of the more common names were already being used. And so I had to think a little bit outside of the box but still wanted to have names that I recognized, that I thought others would recognize as well.”
He also hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a Yastrzemski Street somewhere down the line, though it remains to be seen whether the spelling could be a headache for Utahn mail carriers.
“You know, that might be one that I do in a future subdivision,” Parr teased. “There’s been so much buzz about this that we’re talking internally about doing this again. It’s been fun.”
He said he’s only aware of one negative comment from the local community, courtesy of a homeowner who didn’t realize “Pesky Lane” was named for a Red Sox great, not a troublesome annoyance. Otherwise, Parr said the online attention these past few days has been “crazy.”
“I didn’t even know about it until yesterday morning, and I’ve been seeing all these comments and posts and things like that,” Parr said. “It’s just been so fun.”
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