Salt Lake:Official development news thread

[delts145]

Originally Posted by scottharding

I hate to tell you Delts, but Alpine is not Utah's little swiss town. That would be Midway, UT. Host of the annual Swiss days festival. The town was founded by the swiss, and actually has a city ordinance in place that all buildings must match the swiss decor. It's a very charming community, with fantastic little bed and breakfast inns. The Blue Boar in is my favorite.

The point was that Urban Salt Lake is about as beautiful by way of immediate scenery as it gets. Alpine....Midway, they're both very beautiful. I was told by the old timers that they've been calling Alpine "Little Switzerland" since pioneer times. It's neighboring city of Highland takes it's name from it's resemblance to the Highlands of Scotland. Hey, I'm European and very familiar with and have lived in the Alps. Alpine's scenery is just as or more Swiss-like than Midway. Though, I am a big fan of the way that Midway has actually embraced the Bavarian/Swiss architecture. Also of course, Alpine's roots are more of a genetic mixed bag than Midway's beginning.

[T-Mac]

Salt Lake City on a hazy morning.





Marmalade

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

Originally Posted by T-Mac

Salt Lake City on a hazy morning.





Marmalade

So, now that we know Marmalade has ditched the idea of building their condos, does anyone know if market station is doing anything similar?

[SLC Projects]

I thought the Marmalade were going to be a few stories, not just a one story retail.

???

[Scraperdude801]

Originally Posted by T-Mac

Salt Lake City on a hazy morning.

What building is that, and where is that? Good pics!

[arkhitektor]

Originally Posted by Scraperdude801

What building is that, and where is that? Good pics!

http://www.slcmeridiencondos.com/public/home.asp

[urbanboy]

Originally Posted by SLC Projects

I thought the Marmalade were going to be a few stories, not just a one story retail.

???

This development is on the west side of the 300 West. The development on the East side of the street--which I think you are referring to--has been delayed.

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

Originally Posted by Scraperdude801

What building is that, and where is that? Good pics!

Wow, for once the building looks much more beautiful then the rendering.

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

When I was in Cape Town a year I ago I thought it resembled SLC in A LOT of ways, especially with the architecture of the buildings and the height of the buildings. If you look at CT downtown area and SLC's downtown the biggest difference, you know besides the ocean , is that Cape Town had really very few parking lots downtown. Around the downtown area they had a few but no where near as many as we do. They also had a ton, and I mean a ton of residential downtown. I think in the future after the 4,000 or so residential units get build, 222 south main gets built, CCC gets built and one or two more residential towers that are independent of these projects gets built we will have a downtown area that's on par with Cape Town, in looks at least.
downtown
PS not my pics



cape town

[Stenar]

Originally Posted by Justnslcsugarhood.

Wow, for once the building looks much more beautiful then the rendering.

That's because the building is not new construction, which is generally very poor in craftsmanship. This is the former VA hospital built in the 1930s.

[Comrade]

I wish our downtown was as dense as Capetown.

Salt Lake's looks good from afar, but aerials show just how pathetic it is outside of Main Street. Quite depressing.

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

I wish our downtown was as dense as Capetown.

Salt Lake's looks good from afar, but aerials show just how pathetic it is outside of Main Street. Quite depressing.

We should start taxing ground level parking lots like mad between 400 west, 600 east, south temple and 900 south and make developers put parking lots behind their businesses along University Bolivard, Broadway and anything that is north of south temple on third west. What do you guys think? Is the city even allowed to do such a thing?

[Orlando]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

I wish our downtown was as dense as Capetown.

Salt Lake's looks good from afar, but aerials show just how pathetic it is outside of Main Street. Quite depressing.

This is the result of no-control, laissez-faire development typical of most American cities that were developed largely after the freeways were built. In other words, SPRAWL is what has caused the blight of american urban centers! There are some people on this forum who do not understand this (I-215 among others).

[DMTower]

Originally Posted by urbanboy

This development is on the west side of the 300 West. The development on the East side of the street--which I think you are referring to--has been delayed.

I was under the impression that even the west side of the development would be 3 stories or so as well... retail at street level, with 2 floors of office above. Did they scale back or was that always the plan?

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

Originally Posted by Orlando

This is the result of no-control, laissez-faire development typical of most American cities that were developed largely after the freeways were built. In other words, SPRAWL is what has caused the blight of american urban centers! There are some people on this forum who do not understand this (I-215 among others).

Just out of curiosity what is the difference between Denver's downtown ordinances and SLC's? Does Denver have certain ordinances that encourage downtown development that SLC does not? does Portland? what's the similarity between cities like Boise, Albuquerque and SLC that has made their downtowns suffer so much and can it be linked to excessive suburban development?
Also from what i have seen in pictures Salt Lake was booming at the turn of the century. What happened? how did we go from cultural Meca to ghost town on Maine Street?

If you look at all the additional buildings in this photo, they aren't that tall. If we could have encouraged downtown development we wouldn't be talking about how cool SLC could be....

I kinda agree with you though. If you took half of what has been built in Murray and Sandy in terms of ten story buildings and put them downtown we would be half way to Cape Town's density .

[delts145]

Boise and Albuquerque have an excuse in that they're metro population is much smaller than Salt Lakes. If Boise had a population base like Seattle or even Portland, I think we would see much of the same style of Pacific Northwest downtown in Boise, "give it time." Perhaps, we should say that the right style is there already in Boise and it's just a matter of time and growth to occur. Albuquerque, is anyones guess. Denver did luck out with the oil boom of the late 70's and early 80's. That was the time when Denver really built those 40-50 story towers, and much of the boom of it's downtown overall. Of course, the boom went bust and it took allot of time for Denver to fully recover, and fill those towers. Today, Denver is picking up the pace from an already established list of good decision making.

Denver, if one looks at the population base of the metro, has done an infinately better job with it's downtown than say Phoenix. But then Salt Lake also has done a much better job than Phoenix at focusing on the downtown, when you consider that metro Phoenix has over 4 million people, and should look more like Seattle. However, that's all in the past and Salt Lake and Phoenix are both making great headway now in creating a much more vibrant downtown. I do think that Salt Lake will still be ahead of Phoenix in ten years as far as the density and attractiveness of the CBD.

Perhaps, if there were more past diversity within the overall metro population, Salt Lake would be even far larger than say a Denver, and would have benefitted by building booms in the CBD as affected by it's metro base. However, one cannot argue that much of the development where the LDS Church has had ownership downtown has been positive. In many ways, the creative potential for much of the downtown palate that now exists, would not be possible if not for the LDS Church influence.

I'm pretty emphatic about the fact that Salt Lake City has many features that will lead it to easily being one of the most attractive CBDs in the country. Features such as it's backdrop cannot be immitated. There also seems to be a propensity in Salt Lake for monumental architecture and accompanying plazas,gardens and water features. In most cities in America, particurlarly the West, this does not exist. The skylines might be attractive from a distance, but the inner streets are very boring, even if dense. Also, the large blocks in the Salt Lake CBD will keep giving way to a long list of creative inner-block development, such as we are now seeing with CCC/Richards and Regent streets. That ease of inner block development is something most city downtowns can only envy, and will become increasingly important over the next 10 to 20 years.

More and more, highly educated people from all walks of life are realizing the attractive features of living along the Wasatch. They bring with them a large plate of attractive real estate development. All we need is to continue the creative track that a more sophisticated leadership like Huntsman or Mayor Becker and today's U. of U. urban planners are currently on.

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

just to kinda compare Mountain West downtowns.

Denver
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Phoenix, whom I believe has a more substantial downtown then SLC.

Boise

Salt lake




PS not my pics

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

let's not forget BIllings shall we

[cololi]

I don't think that you can separate the condition of an urban core and sprawl. Sprawl is the death star to downtowns everywhere, not just the western US. Some have found a way to minimize the impact, while others have struggled. Even Denver had a dead downtown 20 years ago. I think it was Time magazine that did a story on denver and described Denver like this: "You can't fall off of the floor" meaning Denver had hit rock bottom. I would say 20 years of sound planning and public and private investment has quickly transformed the place. the key is that you need to find what is unique about a location and build off of it and not simply mimic what other places have done.

As far as SLC goes, there are some things that are unique to SLC that prevent major development problems. Including the large streets and blocks. There are design solutions to address these, but the margin of error is very slim and we tend to try to address them on a project by project basis, which does not lead to a very good urban fabric and makes the margin of error even smaller. SLC needs to get a unified vision for their downtown that directs both public and private investment in key areas that will foster future growth that relates to the spae surrounding it. So far, we have done that in a very limited capacity.

[Justnslcsugarhood.]

Originally Posted by cololi

I don't think that you can separate the condition of an urban core and sprawl. Sprawl is the death star to downtowns everywhere, not just the western US. Some have found a way to minimize the impact, while others have struggled. Even Denver had a dead downtown 20 years ago. I think it was Time magazine that did a story on denver and described Denver like this: "You can't fall off of the floor" meaning Denver had hit rock bottom. I would say 20 years of sound planning and public and private investment has quickly transformed the place. the key is that you need to find what is unique about a location and build off of it and not simply mimic what other places have done.

As far as SLC goes, there are some things that are unique to SLC that prevent major development problems. Including the large streets and blocks. There are design solutions to address these, but the margin of error is very slim and we tend to try to address them on a project by project basis, which does not lead to a very good urban fabric and makes the margin of error even smaller. SLC needs to get a unified vision for their downtown that directs both public and private investment in key areas that will foster future growth that relates to the spae surrounding it. So far, we have done that in a very limited capacity.

courtesy of http://www.denverskyscrapers.com/ima...on/1978_01.jpg

So, Denver, In my opinion, had a much more substantial downtown twenty to thirty years ago then does SLC in the present.