Salt Lake City: Official Development News Thread - Part 3

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

City Creek Reserve should buy this building if they don't already own it (they own the parking garages behind it), and they should tear it down and rebuild a nice building with set backs off Regent Street to match Cheesecake Factory and put some kind of tourist restaurant like you'd see in Downtown Disney, insert Hard Rock Cafe, Bubba Jump, Rainforest Cafe, etc. It would build on what they have with Brio and Cheesecake Factory and it would lure people across the street to the resturant(s) and retail that will be on Regent Street with the new Performing Arts Center.

Originally Posted by DMTower

I've always thought that would be a perfect spot for a condo or apartment tower. A boutique hotel could be good too

Works for me. Let's throw a nice restaurant in the bottom floor with outdoor seating on Regent Street and we'll call it good.

[millhouse]

It's a good idea. But why would they want to draw their customers out of their development and send them to a competing development?

[asies1981]

Originally Posted by delts145

I very much agree with SLC Projects. Asies1981, you've come along at the perfect time as far as I'm concerned. I so appreciate your blog updates with their accompanying photos and article. It all works to significantly increase the quality of the forum in general, and specifically the Compilation Thread. A Million Thanks!

Thanks you guys I appreciate it. Salt Lake is ready for a urban development news blog. When I wrote for Nextcity we wrote about Salt Lake a few times and CityLab (formerly the Atlantic Cities) has even done a series on us. So I agree the time is right. If anyone is interested in being a paid freelancer (one to two posts a week) email me at [email protected] and I'll go over the requirements. There is so much going on I can't cover it all myself, lol.

[asies1981]

Post on Sugarhouse Crossing and Liberty Village.

[SLC Projects]

Another slow day on the forum and since I was bored I thought I would ask the question, "What will SLC be like in ten years?......2024? What do you think the population will be? How many new skyscrapers/highrises? Any new pro sports teams? More Street Cars/Trax? Any major companies moving downtown?

Looking back to 2004 ( ten years ago ) and remembering just how slow downtown development was back then with the new SLC library just opening the year before while sitting back and wondering what's the next big thing for Salt Lake? Remembering all the rumors of the LDS church wanting to redevelop the two downtown malls and just waiting to get word on just when will we ever see 222 south main break ground. In those days it would seem that just seeing a single small crane downtown was a big deal. Now move forward ten years later and there's seems to be development at just about every corner downtown. Point I'm making here is that a lot can happen in ten years. Going from dead to boom! So I can't help but think, what will these next ten years bring?

Just for fun I'm going to share my timeline guess of what we COULD see within ten years......

Later 2014 we learn a lot more about the CCH, site, developer, renderings, ect.
2015 CCH breaks ground with three new skyscrapers UC ( 111 south main, 151, and CCH ) Plus Air Hotel as another highrise UC
2016 UPAC/111 South Main opens, CCH still UC, goldman sachs moves to either 111 south main or 151 taking up most of the building.
2017 CCH tops our as Salt Lake's new tallest.
2018 CCH opens for business with a 2nd large hotel in the works
2019 LDS Church announcing plans for a 2nd COB that will be taller then their first as the church continues to grow. Future Mayor wins in a landslid in votes as SLC's newest mayor.
2020 Salt Lake City reaches past 200,000 people within the city. Zions Bank announcing plans to develop their new HQ tower on the parking lot of 1st and main
2021 UWTC announcing they have out grown their building at the former Eaglegate tower and come up with plans for a new tower 30-story + ( maybe at the future tower 8 site? )
2022 Millers or some other investers announcing of bringing a MLB team to Salt Lake City
2023 Plans for a new Baseball stadium in the works somewhere in or around downtown
2024 Tom Dolan throws in the towel as he gives up trying to have his city as "the next downtown" SLC continues to see plenty of housing/office/hotel developments all over downtown. Sugarhouse has it's own mini skyline of a group of 7-15 story buildings.

I'm sure I'm dreaming with a lot of these, but I'm just having some fun here. What do you guys have?

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by SLC Projects

Another slow day on the forum and since I was bored I thought I would ask the question, "What will SLC be like in ten years?......2024? What do you think the population will be? How many new skyscrapers/highrises? Any new pro sports teams? More Street Cars/Trax? Any major companies moving downtown?

I think about this a lot and about the metro as a whole. We have to really appreciate the bigger picture of where we are now to even project what things may come. Utah has pretty much always been hit hardest by recessions and slower to pull out of them since the Great Depression. The Great Recession was the first time we really ended this pattern and were hit less hard and recovered extremely quickly. If you look at our unemployment numbers and the trajectory we should easily be under 3% unemployment by spring of next year (and unemployment never really gets much lower than that). We've gained these jobs back and have created many more to meet the population growth here and all the new groups of people entering the work place. If we keep making jobs at this rate we should get to a point where we are gonna need people to move to Utah to fill them and because much of the US is still slow in this recovery, it shouldn't be hard to bring people here for work. So I expect our population will growth much faster than has been projected. Already we are on course for 3,000,000 in Utah by the end of 2015.

In short, Utah is set to boom before other states and therefore, we may see the greater investment in our state that being part of a boom from start to finish can bring. This means more businesses expanding or moving here. This means more inventment in developing commercial real estate and lots of housing. So I think the fundamentals look really good for the whole metro which plays into things like having money to expand transportation and transit options as well as bringing in things like more professional sports teams.

Now focusing on Salt Lake City, once this Convention Center Hotel is announced and secured with a location and a design, we will end a chapter of building on a certain scale in downtown Salt Lake City. All the bigger scale projects to possibly be built like a MLB stadium won't ever be near Main Street (more likely near Granary or out on North Temple). We'll see the RDA really come into its own in redeveloping at a much smaller more urban scale that should prove less dangerous to historical structures. To put things into perspective, after the UPAC they are going to redo the smaller theatre across the street and instead of it costing over 200 million it will be under 20. So the scale and scattered nature of redevelopment downtown will resemble fixing a person's infected bodypart with precise medicine instead of cutting the whole arm off and building a new one.

National trends will, more than anything, determine if high paying companies want to move back into class A skyscrapers in downtowns or prefer business parks and Salt Lake City will be effected by that either way.

The politics will be interesting too. We are at a high point of unity between the mayor's office, the chamber of commerce and the LDS Church. After the Convention Center Hotel happens I don't see it as expedient that any of the three parties remain so joined at the hip. Last mayor's race the chamber didn't run a real Republican contender against Becker, that may change... I can also see Salt Lake learning from the convention center hotel incentive program and applying it corporations too dissuade them from cheaper alternatives like Lehi. There will also be the impending possibility of an annexation of South Salt Lake which would change the political dynamic in Salt Lake City (it's not hard to do in a city slightly under 200,000 people).

By 2024 much of our debt in bonds will be paid off. For instance, the majority of Frontlines 2015 will be paid off.

The timeline:

2015: Design and construction begins on the Convention Center Hotel.
2015: Federal Funding is secured for both the Provo BRT and Sugarhouse Expansion.
2015: The new Airport Terminal design is finalized.
2016: The UPAC and 111 skyscraper are completed.
2016: The funding is secured for the downtown 2nd south streetcar line.
2016: construction is completed late in the year for the S line expansion.
2016: Construction begins on the New Airport Terminal and Parking Garage.
2017: completion of the convention center hotel (a new tallest).
2017: Ridership on FrontRunner hits 20,000. Light Rail / Streetcar ridership hits 75,000.
2018:large commercial skyscraper is announced (a new tallest).
2018: downtown streetcar on 2nd is complete.
2019: the new airport terminal opens with expedited plans for the island concourse.
2020: completion of new tallest commercial skyscraper.
2024: The airport buildout is complete with the island concourse and underground people mover.
2024: The population is 3,600,000
2024: FrontRunner ridership is 30,000 and light rail / streetcar is 90,000.
2024: Salt Lake City secures MLB or NFL team (steal it from another city).

[jubguy3]

S.p.hansen, one thing to note is that (I think, I may be wrong) the new lines aren't being counted (regardless, it takes a couple years for ridership to pick up) and the post Frontlines era should bring steady ridership improvements (another 5000 max are possible on a 24/7 airport- university line which could be the best all day line because of the airport having constant flights and the university kids wanting to go places) with the addition of BRT (as a supplement to light rail, not including itself in the prediction) and better bus services and the steady increases on the airport and sugarhouse lines. I would expect 75000 a little sooner, especially if the 11th east project gets sped up and work begins on developments around 22nd south (where the hell are all of these buildings I was promised? It still feels like a shithole, especially west of 5th east... No one has had any picnics yet, SSL. Fix it now. What happened to market station?) in addition to steady improvements and the yellow line being moved forward (I commute from the university to NW downtown, the transfer is unacceptable and makes everything slow) is also a potential ridership improver. That being said, 20000 for frontrunner is a little high as the needed potential (looking at you vineyard) isn't there.

[jubguy3]

From the transit news thread, my proposed reconfiguration of the intermodal hub (I'm putting it here because SL Central is much more influential to downtown and surrounding areas than other stations and it includes stuff outside transit). I'm going to ask if anyone knows if the building west of the hub is empty? If so I would like to see it get reconfigured. I also presumed that the future park from north temple to university boulevard between UP and I-15 would have a southern anchor and facility hub, so the warehouse would make a good place to house it. It also allows a parking facility for the park and to supplement the very small amount of spaces (cause, you know, no one ever is going to use the only amtrak station to get anywhere or use anything to go outside of slc... UTA is filled with dumbasses.) there so SLC commuters can use the IH to get places. It also presumes the amtrak building being one story (but permanent) with easier access to the platform and platform improvements and the bus concourse either being underground (the arrows show the in and out pattern of movement) with a pavilion above or at ground level with the underground tunnel (I designed the shape of the building to allow easy flow in and out, and for enough bus spaces) being a connector between the warehouse and rio grand pavilion, including the trax, bus concourse, and frontrunner stations. The central concourse would also be 2 stories with exclusively bus services (due to space restrictions) on the bottom and services on the top as allowing (ventilation is needed so the services might need to get moved underground with the tunnel).

If anything here is physically impossible or not public (I.e. The warehouse) let me know.

[AllOutOfBubbleGum]

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

2024: Salt Lake City secures MLB or NFL team (steal it from another city).

I've broken this down with co-workers a few times about what would it take to get one of those Leagues here. It's funny you list 2024, Oakland A's just signed a 10 year lease to stay at their current location. Once that lease is up and they can't get a new stadium and if MLB lets it happen, they will move out of that city. Could it be here???

There is no way Baseball will expand. The only other team that could move is Tampa Bay. Their stadium deal sucks and may not get what they want in the Bay. All other MLB teams have too new stadiums and really don't want to move.

As far as the NFL goes ... If the NFL expands, we will not be on the top 5 list. LA will get a team before we do and even London may get a NFL team before Salt Lake does.

However, teams moving out of their current location is a possibility for us and other cities. San Diego, Oakland, Buffalo, St Louis and Jacksonville all have bad deals with their stadiums. If the deal is sweat enough any one of those teams could end up in LA. To get one of them in Salt Lake would be a massive undertaking. 1- A very rich person. Richer then what we have now. 2- A group of investors that like the idea of moving to Salt Lake and building a 70,000 seat stadium. 3- The City and County is willing. 4- The Corporate money on the Wasatch Front is great enough to make it happen. 5- By 2024 SLC is a top 25 Media Market.

One big problem, Do the tax payers of this area like the idea of forking over 400 million minimum to build a stadium? NFL stadiums are now 700 million to 2 billion dollar projects.

Oh and that's not considering if the Jazz decide to move out of ESA and build a new arena some place. They will want some tax money to do so (That will probably be a directive from the NBA more then the Jazz).

And don't say NHL, it will not happen.

[ajiuO]

Just a quick drive by shot!

[ajiuO]

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

City Creek Reserve should buy this building if they don't already own it (they own the parking garages behind it), and they should tear it down and rebuild a nice building with set backs off Regent Street to match Cheesecake Factory and put some kind of tourist restaurant like you'd see in Downtown Disney, insert Hard Rock Cafe, Bubba Jump, Rainforest Cafe, etc. It would build on what they have with Brio and Cheesecake Factory and it would lure people across the street to the resturant(s) and retail that will be on Regent Street with the new Performing Arts Center.

I would love to see that building go.

[Merewether]

With the major construction going on just to the west of the pictured building, my main concern is that we keep the restaurants we already have on the block. Martine has a sign saying they are closed for remodeling this summer. The deconstruction right up to their party wall must have been noisy and hardly jibes with their very civilized ambiance. With the sidewalk shed for the PAC on Main St. and Main St. north bound motor lane having been closed to traffic I worry a bit about places like Eva's Bakery and Lambs. Last week at lunch time foot traffic, although present, was slow enough that a man and boy were playing soccer in front of MacKay's Jewelry.
Martine, Eva's Bakery, Lamb's and RedHot (which I think is affiliated with Lamb's) are LOCAL businesses. We should all make a vow to support them through the PAC and Office Tower construction. Luckily that won't be a sacrifice: tapas and sherry, croissants, liver and onions, bahn mi dog!

[jubguy3]

Site plan for redevelopment around SLCS with presumably local businesses and high density like LoDo


The west university blvd trax assumes that there is a bridge constructed to go up the poplar grove boulevard viaduct with a potential station on the viaduct (as a redevelopment opportunity, but it's probably way too close).

Blue is potential development. If I'm mercilessly destroying old buildings with the power of the mango lord let me know and please just assume that the plans are modified. It's not easy to erase stuff in sketchbook.

The wide part of the tunnel is where underground route info and services are. The bus concourse is now only 1 story because air has to ventilate up through the roof. There are presumably machines and ticketing info in the tunnel, with additional restrooms and services. It is a small space so not much will be included.

All buildings are intended to use copper, concrete, and glass in their design (at least in the intermodal section, surrounding developments can be used) except for the west warehouse which will maintain the facade (albeit improvements). The canopy is an assumed expensive project (due to its size and complexity, I would see it with copper panels of various quadrilateral sizes skewed at different directions to form what would be a combination of crumpled paper shapes (rough but pointed) and copper. The concrete used would presumably be NOT RED OR ORANGE and polished, with glass on the frontrunner side of the canopy separating UP tracks and frontrunner tracks (is cleaning an issue? Durability?) and various copper elements to highlight the importance of copper in our state. To let in light, what would be copper panels would be replaced with glass, though sunlight issues may still be a problem. For drainage (as undrainable pits would occur where water would collect and ruin the copper) pipes will run along the bottom collecting water at the lowest points and draining it away. New buildings expected to blend in with the canopy, however the IH does not have to.

Project would be tax funded with additional private input and redevelopment potential around the area.

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by jubguy3

S.p.hansen, one thing to note is that (I think, I may be wrong) the new lines aren't being counted (regardless, it takes a couple years for ridership to pick up) and the post Frontlines era should bring steady ridership improvements (another 5000 max are possible on a 24/7 airport- university line which could be the best all day line because of the airport having constant flights and the university kids wanting to go places) with the addition of BRT (as a supplement to light rail, not including itself in the prediction) and better bus services and the steady increases on the airport and sugarhouse lines. I would expect 75000 a little sooner, especially if the 11th east project gets sped up.

They are able to count the ridership instantly. It usually takes one whole quarter after the lines open to see the big change. With the Frontlines lightrail expansion we had a huge surge then a tiny drop off and then a slow precipitous increase. My prediction of 75,000 by 2017 is very optimistic. I base that off further development around the redline, increased social mobility in West Valley, and an increase of ridership in the already established parts of the lines in Salt a Lake City. The street car hasn't proven itself yet nor has it had a chance too. We're at 65,000 a day right now on light rail and streetcars, 10,000 more seems doable in 3 years time and a bit of a stretch.

My FrontRunner prediction I feel far better about as we have seen the system swell to a 15,000 daily ridership and efforts are being made from Weber to Utah counties to integrate the commuter rail with better buses or BRT. The Provo BRT is really going to unlock the potential for FrontRunner for the Provo Orem area much like how TRAX has unlocked it in Salt Lake City.

Originally Posted by AllOutOfBubbleGum

However, teams moving out of their current location is a possibility for us and other cities. San Diego, Oakland, Buffalo, St Louis and Jacksonville all have bad deals with their stadiums. If the deal is sweat enough any one of those teams could end up in LA. To get one of them in Salt Lake would be a massive undertaking. 1- A very rich person. Richer then what we have now. 2- A group of investors that like the idea of moving to Salt Lake and building a 70,000 seat stadium. 3- The City and County is willing. 4- The Corporate money on the Wasatch Front is great enough to make it happen. 5- By 2024 SLC is a top 25 Media Market.

One big problem, Do the tax payers of this area like the idea of forking over 400 million minimum to build a stadium? NFL stadiums are now 700 million to 2 billion dollar projects.

Oh and that's not considering if the Jazz decide to move out of ESA and build a new arena some place. They will want some tax money to do so (That will probably be a directive from the NBA more then the Jazz).

Two things:

1. We don't raise taxes permanently to do the things we have done to help build say, the Delta Center, we do bonds that have expiration dates. Follow the bonds and look at where we will be at in 10 years. For instance, by 2017 the county will be done with a bond for Rio Tinto Stadium. I think by 2018 the 84 million dollar bond to build the library will be expired. There is a bond still out on the Salt Palace expansion (60 million). Anyway, at a county level coming up with a big bond to help pay for a $400 million dollar baseball stadium isn't insurmountable by any means. Our whole state is back in surplus territory with revenues and we have a coveted AAA credit rating. Sales taxes have rebounded. 10 years, and frankly, not a lot to bond outside of possible transit projects in the county should be plenty of time to recharge the tax base. We only helped the Delta Center come into being with 20 million, we can do it again if needed.

2. We're 33 in media markets but ranked above key cities with teams. And we will grow while some ahead of us will remain stagnant.

[DCRes]

I talked to a Goldman Sach's employee the other day and asked if she had heard anything about moving to one of the new towers. She said that Goldman would stay in 222 and possibly expand into one of the other buildings. The don't all their SLC employees in one building so that if one building got damaged in a natural disaster they could still have the other office open. She said that didn't make a lot of sense because the two buildings would be close enough together that the same disaster would likely take out both buildings, but that is what she heard.

Keep in mind, this was not an executive, just a normal employee so I don't know how reliable the information is.

[Old&New]

Originally Posted by ajiuO

Just a quick drive by shot!

Thanks ajiuO, looks interesting. I'm glad the city is maintaining these buildings, and not demolishing them.

[DCRes]

According to a tweet from CBRE, the new Boyer 102 'tower' is 90% leased

[bflatflat9]

Originally Posted by DCRes

According to a tweet from CBRE, the new Boyer 102 'tower' is 90% leased

Dominique Wilkins could dunk over that "tower" . I prefer to call it a building. minor peeve. carry on.

[UTPlanner]

That building that was discussed earlier at 44 E. 100 S. is owned by PRI as is most of the property in the area. I haven't heard of any future plans for the site though admittedly I have walked by a number of times and thought it was certainly an underutilized site.

I'm personally glad to see that Boyer's building is filling up no matter what they call it. It just puts some pressure for them to start on their proposed building on State Street.

Lastly, the city does not own or maintain the state fairgrounds. It is owned by the state of Utah. I'm also glad to see these historic buildings getting a facelift.

[Comrade]

Salt Lake City doesn't have the corporate backing to support a MLB or NFL team. I think, on the whole, those leagues are a generation from ever making their way into the city. If SLC is to ever get another pro sports franchise, it'll be the NHL - and probably by way of relocation. They, like the MLB, aren't looking at expanding too much nowadays.

Thing is, the NHL competes head-to-head with the NBA, so, I wouldn't be surprised if the Millers did everything in their power to thwart the potential - and I'm not so sure I see them bringing in a NHL team.