Salt Lake City: Official Development News Thread - Part 4

[Stenar]

I wish that story/rumor we heard a number of years ago would come about, that the LDS church would build an office park on the land by the North Temple Frontrunner station.

I would like to see a collection of 10-15 story buildings on that site (a mix of heights).

Originally Posted by Future Mayor

That is such fantastic news and I too hope and expect to see 151 break ground by early next year. I would be completely happy seeing a new office tower start to rise every 1.5 - 2 years. 111 S Main broke ground late 2014, 151 breaking ground early 2016, and new tower late 2017. Here is my wish list of sites, (Carl's jr, Zions Lotr, Harmons, City Center{400 S State}), any of those sites would be fine with me.

Throw in CCH, while it appears stalled right now, I suspect it's still going to happen no later than early 2017, and UAC, and by 2019 we could easily have 5 new towers dotting our skyline. I honestly don't think that is all that unrealistic.

All of the above locations would continue to fill in gaps in the skyline, and all but Zions would help to stretch the skyline away from Main a bit more.

[T-Stan]

With all of the development on 400 South, it makes me wonder if many of the apartments are rented out by UofU students. If I was 18 years old and a new Freshmen at the U, I would consider living along the 400 South Corridor and take TRAX to school everyday

All of the new apartments makes me think that Trolley Square needs to make a big push to get people in their doors and not just to Whole Foods. The original owners of Trolley Square wanted to build apartments in that area for years, but never could get support from the community. Now they have people at their doorstep. For the sake of their survival, they better find ways to get people there to spend money.

[jubguy3]

Originally Posted by T-Stan

With all of the development on 400 South, it makes me wonder if many of the apartments are rented out by UofU students. If I was 18 years old and a new Freshmen at the U, I would consider living along the 400 South Corridor and take TRAX to school everyday

All of the new apartments makes me think that Trolley Square needs to make a big push to get people in their doors and not just to Whole Foods. The original owners of Trolley Square wanted to build apartments in that area for years, but never could get support from the community. Now they have people at their doorstep. For the sake of their survival, they better find ways to get people there to spend money.

no college student can pay 3000 a month for an apartment

[Scraperdude801]

Originally Posted by jubguy3

no college student can pay 3000 a month for an apartment

This. Affordable Housing units also prohibit residents from being enrolled as full time students. The whole Affordable Housing system inflates the market rate prices, and with its unique rules, exclude a whole class of people (the class of people who are young and actually are trying to better themselves--the type of people that would enliven urban centers).

[UrbanDesign]

What's the instagram account that has all the great pictures of SLC buildings and a description about their history?

[UtahMan]

Originally Posted by UrbanDesign

What's the instagram account that has all the great pictures of SLC buildings and a description about their history?

https://instagram.com/saltcityarchitect/

[UTPlanner]

jubguy3, where are you getting a number like $3,000.00 a month for rent? Seems like quite a hyperbole to me. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment at the new Eastside Apartments for half that. In fact, I do not know of any where in this city where people are paying that much money for an apartment. The most expensive unit at City Creek is only $2,000.00 a month.

[linguisize]

Originally Posted by UTPlanner

jubguy3, where are you getting a number like $3,000.00 a month for rent? Seems like quite a hyperbole to me. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment at the new Eastside Apartments for half that. In fact, I do not know of any where in this city where people are paying that much money for an apartment. The most expensive unit at City Creek is only $2,000.00 a month.

It is most definitely hyperbole, but even at 800-1000 for a one bedroom the point still stands; that's too much for young people that don't have a great salary yet.

[EPdesign]

When my partner and I went to check out the apartments on 300 e and 150 s. The ones by the same co as the encore. They were asking $1250 for a one bed room.

[T-Stan]

Of course University students often share apartments and if the room is large enough, they even will share a room. Years ago when I was a part-time student/part-time worker, I shared a "1 bedroom" apartment with a friend downtown. It had an "enclosed sun deck" which became my bedroom.

Only the wealthiest of college students are going to move into the brand new apartments, but there are places that are a little older that students could afford.

It would be cool to see some affordable student housing built in the downtown area.

[KPBDEV]

Quick Update - AUC

I just wanted to give a quick update. We will be coming out with more information in coming months about the Air Urban Center (AUC). We have made big strides regarding the final capital stack and various key partnerships, etc. We are finalizing design (just minor changes to the interior floor plans, etc.) based on feedback from our hotel partner and builder.

We are engaging the city and state at several levels and should be able to announce our partnerships and a more solid start to build date, info should be coming in two or three months. Mainly we have to lock down our plans and get final on total build budget/estimate. We cannot make any formal announcements until these items are completed (chicken and the egg scenario). I wish I had more for you, but the project is progressing nicely in general. Our goal is to start construction by mid 2016 and hopefully not slide to 2017 as some are speculating. Big projects like AUC can and will throw a lot of curve balls, so no guarantees on final details as of yet.

I will post more definitive information as I'm able.

Regarding the post about the 28 story building at the Arrow Press Square site. We have heard nothing about this from the city, etc. As some have suggested (as well to me) it looks like a copy of our AUC (sort of a merge of our old and new design) taking several obvious design elements from our building. If in fact a true project I would like to see changes to it so it stands as a unique project and not a clone/copy of AUC. Like most of you I love to see progressive investment and building happen in SLC. However I also agree that we must preserve our historical sites/structures. Beautiful history should be preserved and not replaced. With AUC we are building something beautiful and needed from a location that was just an old tire store, which I'm sure you all would agree is a major improvement to our growing downtown core at several levels. I think beautiful historical architecture should be preserved at all cost if at all possible.

Cheers, Ken

[EPdesign]

I was actually fond of that tire shop. :-( lol. Jk. Thank you for the update. I'm excited to see AUC get built

[jedikermit]

Thanks for the update Ken -- hope all is well.

[DCRes]

Ken, we crave updates like this, so thank you. Can't wait to hear the final plans, hotel partner, and timeline. Keep up the good work!

Just curious, what is your opinion of the proposed Regent Hotel. That one doesn't seem like a rip off of your project, like the Arrow Press one does, and I think that both projects can be successful. The designs are different and probably will cater to a different client.

[Orlando]

Thanks for the update Ken.

Fyi, the reason why the Arrow Press Square tower looks like the AUC is because it is designed by the same architect(Brian Junge) of IDC group.

[jubguy3]

Originally Posted by UTPlanner

jubguy3, where are you getting a number like $3,000.00 a month for rent? Seems like quite a hyperbole to me. You can get a 2 bedroom apartment at the new Eastside Apartments for half that. In fact, I do not know of any where in this city where people are paying that much money for an apartment. The most expensive unit at City Creek is only $2,000.00 a month.

Some guy I know from my church just tried to sign a contract for 3000 a month for a studio at that ugly building on 200 s 300 e. He has no money or concept of finance and my mom had to have a talk with him about finances. He's 55 and it was almost funny

[Makid]

Warning, long post but laden with information.

Because I needed to fill some time last night, I went looking for possible numbers regarding how many residential units downtown SLC could support currently.

I ended up coming across the full document spread from the State of Downtown event. In there, this document was fairly interesting:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/742oyt0j381cl...DLERa/2015%20DTA%20Survey%20WEB.pdf?dl=0

It is a survey done by Richter 7 to get information from roughtly 600+ people throughout the state but focusing more on the area from Weber County, Davis County, Utah County and Salt Lake County. It gives the survey roughly a 3% margin of error for the counties listed.

It asked general questions about what is liked or not liked about downtown as well as where you shop, work and the like.

It then asks if people would consider living downtown. 25% of the respondents stated they would like to live downtown. This is up from 22% in 2013.

There is a breakdown by income. It isn't surprising that the largest group that would like to live downtown brings in $150,000 or more yearly. What is surprising is that the next 2 groups (tied) are the Under $25,000 yearly and the $25,000 to $49,999 yearly.

It also provided a breakdown by age groups. It was a bit surprising given that we know that the younger generation around the country have been moving to the city but thought that Utah would be different. It really isn't. Age groups break out as follows for those that want to live downtown:

18-24: 46%
25-29: 33%
30-34: 22%
35-39: 15%
40-44: 22%
45-54: 21%
55-64: 27%

This does show that there is a strong desire for both the old (empty nests) and the young (just starting/young families) to live downtown.

From the numbers (using the 3% margin of error) 22% - 28% of the population of the Wasatch Front that would consider living downtown currently. That is higher than most people would think and that does show that downtown could provide a lot more residential units going forward.

Using 2,000,000 (low I know) as the Wasatch Front population, 20% is still 400,000 people that would consider living in downtown Salt Lake City today.

So, what is holding people back from making the move?

For people that would consider living in downtown the #1 issue is cost. #2 is employment opportunities.

#2 goes hand in hand with population. As residential population increases, jobs will locate closer. We are seeing this currently. It would only increase as more residents are added.

#1 however goes to the discussion earlier about impact fees. Unless the SLC Council does some changes, the impact fees per unit will climb back up to roughly $5,000. This will stifle growth and limit it to just the high end and remove roughly 90% of the people that would like to live downtown.

That takes the 400,000 number from above down to 40,000.

I do think that if the impact fees could be dropped by 1/2 from where they are today and go lower based on density (keep the fee to ensure utilities are upgraded accordingly) maybe down to $200 per unit with densities greater than 50 units per acre?

If we use the numbers and say only 20% of them (80,000 people) were able to live downtown because prices drop, this could translate to between 20,000 and 45,000 units being built within downtown SLC today.

What this does is show that there is strong demand for downtown living but cost is the strongest factor for limiting that demand. If costs were to decrease for both rents and condo prices, the demand would keep the construction boom going for years and years. We might finally see a highrise apartment building or 2.

The demand would be enough to offset the reduction in impact fees. Just imagine another 80,000 people living downtown, especially when the last census had the downtown population at roughly 5,000 people.

Downtown would be lively 24/7, services would increase, sales would increase and tax revenue would increase for the city to allow for providing increased services to residents throughout the city.

What was shocking in the report is the breakdown by County for those who would consider living downtown. The #1 Country that would consider living downtown is Utah County at 29%, SL County is 28% but still. That shocked me that Utah County would be that high.

[DMTower]

Originally Posted by Orlando

Thanks for the update Ken.

Fyi, the reason why the Arrow Press Square tower looks like the AUC is because it is designed by the same architect(Brian Junge) of IDC group.

He really needs to stop trying to make the metal flying buttress thing "a thing". It's god awful.

[KPBDEV]

Orlando ... AUC was not designed by IDC group the firm we hired is IBI. IBI is a large international architectural/design firm originating from Toronto, Canada.

[Comrade]

The Salt Lake Tribune endorsed Jackie Biskupski. I'm thinking it'll be between Jackie and Becker in November - and it could be a doozy of an election.

I'd say, as much as I am disappointed with Becker, and won't be voting for him in November, I do think SLC has some good candidates running. I'd be disappointed if Jackie doesn't win, but still feel confident with another Becker term. Wish I could say the same about every other election locally.