Art, music staying in downtown Salt Lake City. But how and where?
Salt Lake County weighs renovating or rebuilding the home of the Utah Symphony
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2024/08...bravanel-hall/
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In a backroom at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, a dozen children wearing smocks were busily painting and chatting away as executive director Laura Allred Hurtado showed me and a photographer around the indistinct building, sandwiched between the Salt Palace Convention Center and Abravanel Hall in downtown Salt Lake City.
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“It’s a very sincere attempt to preserve the hall as is. But I don’t have all the information right now,” Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said. “I’m literally going through architectural renderings to say how do we preserve but not compromise the connectivity and activation we’re looking for for all of those assets.”
Before even considering what to do with Abravanel Hall, she said the county needs to figure out how to replace about 40% of the nearly 1 million square-foot Salt Lake Palace Convention Center that would be bulldozed in the SEG plan. And that’s complicated.
“What’s often overlooked is the extensive amount of renovation that will need to be done on the Salt Palace. First and foremost, the county and region and the state can’t walk away from our investment in the facility,” Wilson said, adding the convention center not only generates revenue but impacts hotels, restaurants and the city’s reputation. “Equal or beyond the importance of keeping the Jazz and adding hockey is a vibrant tourism industry.”
Conventions and visitors in Salt Lake County generate $5 billion annually in direct spending and more than $10 million a year in hotel tax revenue for Salt Lake City, a county economic analysis shows.
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A cost analysis estimated replacing the square footage range at $800 million to $2.3 billion, she said. Wilson said she has also looked at moving the symphony hall down the street closer to the Hyatt Regency as well as other nearby properties.
“There aren’t a lot of options to replace that square footage. The reason this (going underground) was even suggested was we’re trying to avoid additional cost and additional infrastructure needs,” she said. “There’s quite an expense to that but Salt Lake County doesn’t have the revenue stream.”
That means, Wilson said, the Utah Legislature would have to provide the money. “The Legislature’s going to want to have to do this,” she said. “We’re not going to compromise the success of our Salt Palace.”
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With the cost to renovate the Salt Palace coming in so high, I do expect that we will see something from the State Legislature this next session to either come up with funds directly, or via a 'required' tax in SL County to cover the costs.
The costs for the Convention Center do not include the possible replacement costs for either UMOCA nor Abravanel Hall (if the plan is to put the convention space underground).
Additionally, without putting the convention center underground, 1st South will not be opening up.
One reason for the high costs is that the County needs to keep the Conventions active during the reconstruction process. They cannot and will not risk the convention business as it is more beneficial to both downtown SLC and SL County than the entertainment district.
Lastly, SL County will not be able to move forward with any plans to remove the Western portion of the Salt Palace without a funding mechanism in place to replace the lost space, let alone having it in place before any demolition on the block happens.
I think this means that we are at least a year out or more before the County can even move forward on any work for the Salt Palace, plus 2 - 3 years or so for construction of the updated Convention Center. This means we are looking at 2027/2028 for the Entertainment District to possibly start construction. That puts the completion around 2030-2032.
This will be a lot of construction around 4 blocks (5 if we include The West Quarter) over the next 7 - 8 years.
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