Salt Lake City: Official Development News Thread - Part 4

[Stenar]

Originally Posted by Future Mayor

Except that was not a result from partially treated goop. Low water levels and heat caused the algae. The discharge from sewer treatment plants is very clean, and often times it's cleaner than culinary water supplies.

Low water levels and heat on their own will do nothing to create algae. Phosphates left over in treated sewage caused the algae bloom. Phosphates are one of the best fertilizers. While treated sewage is cleaner, it is not as clean as culinary water supplies. It can be cleaned to the point of being as clean as culinary water, but sewage plants are not currently required to clean the output to the level of culinary water.

The state of Utah, prior to this bloom, had a mandate to sewage plants to filter out and prevent ⅔ of phosphates from being dumped in the lake, but that rule doesn't come into effect until 2020.

[SL,UT]

Originally Posted by delts145

Not to offend anybody's open space sensibilities, but I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to develop some of that barren slope to the far left, behind and north of the Capital. Hey, it is downtown adj., and also in the interest of urban density. I'm thinking along the line of the project that Orlando posted recently, that's going up at the mouth of Emigration Canyon.


.

I would love to see a huge forest of pine trees planted on all that open hill top space. I think it would look very cool if all that space was a dense forest with trails zig zagging through it.

[EPdesign]

Originally Posted by Stenar

Low water levels and heat on their own will do nothing to create algae. Phosphates left over in treated sewage caused the algae bloom. Phosphates are one of the best fertilizers. While treated sewage is cleaner, it is not as clean as culinary water supplies. It can be cleaned to the point of being as clean as culinary water, but sewage plants are not currently required to clean the output to the level of culinary water.

The state of Utah, prior to this bloom, had a mandate to sewage plants to filter out and prevent ⅔ of phosphates from being dumped in the lake, but that rule doesn't come into effect until 2020.

Isn't the same kind of thing happening in Florida as well, for similar reasons?

[Stenar]

Originally Posted by EPdesign

Isn't the same kind of thing happening in Florida as well, for similar reasons?

Yes, Florida has massive algae blooms because of phosphates as well. Interestingly, when Utah needed to test the various waters for cyanobacteria and toxins, they had to send the samples to Florida to be tested.

[JMK]

Red Lion hotel has a new logo, although you can still see the remnants of the old sign on the building. I heard the building was getting some renovations, does anyone know how that's coming?

[Future Mayor]

That hotel could definitely use some exterior updates, especially since they are going with a much more streamlined/modern logo.

[ajiuO]

Originally Posted by Future Mayor

The ribbon cutting for the Theater is scheduled for October 18th.

I do think you're right though on the sidewalk reopening any day now. I walked past is yesterday and it looks pretty complete to me. The curb and sidewalks were different than normal. There are section of the Main St sidewalk that actually two sections maybe 10' long that slope down to the street. Maybe it's for better valet access or Red Carpet walks, I'm not sure.

I peaked in the mid-block walkway and they are doing some work in there, they had something installed in the ground, put I couldn't tell what they were. This whole PAC, 111, Regent St project is going to have a massive positive impact for that area of downtown and downtown in general.

Yup... fence is gone today.

[SLCdude]

Originally Posted by Makid

TSA zone changes are coming:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4159391-155/salt-lake-city-holds-open-house

T

I think I can actually attend the open house tomorrow!

[TonyAnderson]

Originally Posted by Gastroc

The only population statistic that matters is CSA (Combined Statistical Area) roughly 2,468,000 for SLC's. Salt Lake Ranks 23rd in the US while our metro area is 48th. When looking at population of a city, as has been mentioned, it is all relative because some cities like Oklahoma City, have a "city" population of over 630,000 because their city limits cover over 620 sq. miles while SLC's only covers 110 sq. miles. But OKC's CSA is 1.4 million, which is 39th overall, sixteen spots lower than SLC's CSA. CSA are your people who will commute for work, college, shopping and athletic events in the main city and surrounding areas so SLC is doing pretty well in that regard. Cities population statistics are completely relative and trivial in my opinion.

One thing to consider when comparing CSA's ...they don't take into account MSA's that don't have CSAs (e.g Phoenix). So to see where we rank, you need to look at any MSAs that are bigger than our CSAs as well. Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa Bay all have larger MSAs than our CSA. So Salt Lake would rank 26th overall. Still impressive.

Another important population statistic ...density.

But yeah, nobody compares city population numbers. I mean Jacksonville, Florida is the most populated city in the entire Southeast. It also has 760 sq/miles of land. That's more than Salt Lake County.

[Marvland]

Originally Posted by Makid

TSA zone changes are coming:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/4159391-155/salt-lake-city-holds-open-house

You can also comment and take a survey regarding the current and planned changes at the following: http://www.slcgov.com/opencityhall?pd_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.peakdemocracy.com%2Fportals%2F79%2F3835

The main changes are found here: http://www.slcdocs.com/Planning/Projects/Current%20Initiatives/TSAChangesConsideredJuly20.pdf

The document does have a score re-evaluation at the bottom to show how the changes would affect the projects. I like that they are giving better scores to those that have less parking going forward...

The timeline for this is that Q4' of this year is when it would be updated pending any other changes.

Geez thanks for bringing this up. I'm all for the new scoring and notification requirements but buried into this is a very troublesome change to change the TSA zoning from "everything goes except for these uses" back to the traditional, ossified SLC way of "only these uses are permitted"via land use table. All because it's hard on planning staff. This proposal is totally unacceptable as-is. Great, now I will be fighting this piece of steaming garbage for the next two months. Background: The TSA zone was the only flexible zoning for non-codified or under-codified uses like distilleries, wineries and breweries. So we get chopped off at the knees before anybody can even use this flexibility. Typical SLC: one step forward, three steps back. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work I guess. 🞵🞵🞵🞵.

[linguisize]

Originally Posted by Marvland

Geez thanks for bringing this up. I'm all for the new scoring and notification requirements but buried into this is a very troublesome change to change the TSA zoning from "everything goes except for these uses" back to the traditional, ossified SLC way of "only these uses are permitted"via land use table. All because it's hard on planning staff. This proposal is totally unacceptable as-is. Great, now I will be fighting this piece of steaming garbage for the next two months. Background: The TSA zone was the only flexible zoning for non-codified or under-codified uses like distilleries, wineries and breweries. So we get chopped off at the knees before anybody can even use this flexibility. Typical SLC: one step forward, three steps back. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work I guess. 🞵🞵🞵🞵.

It's still very much so in the planning phases though. They seem pretty open to changing it with more input. What else would you like to see going on with it?

[Marvland]

Originally Posted by linguisize

It's still very much so in the planning phases though. They seem pretty open to changing it with more input. What else would you like to see going on with it?

This provision is the closest thing we have to a taste of Houston's zoning ordinance without all of the Houston problems, ie excessive and over- powerful HOA's, strip clubs too close to other uses, etc. The zoning is currently open to all uses except those that are prohibited. No other zone group allows this flexibility. Most people and developers are unaware of this incredible thing.

Possible solutions: leave it alone (my vote), OR: expand and clarify the forbidden uses, or leave the land use table expressly open to editing for a few years to allow this to settle a bit. In fact, I would advocate for a quarterly review of all land use tables in all mixed use and commercial zones. Currently, it can take a year or two to get a text amendment like that.

This is a microcosm of the problem with SLC right now. Slightly off topic: I have a development that is fully planning/zoning compliant that has taken 18 months to get to pre-approved plat level. This is the main thing that is holding back development in Salt Lake City. Rant button off.

[airhero]

Originally Posted by TonyAnderson

One thing to consider when comparing CSA's ...they don't take into account MSA's that don't have CSAs (e.g Phoenix). So to see where we rank, you need to look at any MSAs that are bigger than our CSAs as well. Phoenix, San Diego, and Tampa Bay all have larger MSAs than our CSA. So Salt Lake would rank 26th overall. Still impressive.

Another important population statistic ...density.

But yeah, nobody compares city population numbers. I mean Jacksonville, Florida is the most populated city in the entire Southeast. It also has 760 sq/miles of land. That's more than Salt Lake County.

Wikipedia calls it Primary Statistical Area, for all CSAs plus MSAs which aren't included in a CSA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_primary_statistical_areas_of_the_United_States

I'm sure this point doesn't need to be driven further but adding to how inadvisable it is to look at city proper to measure how big a city is, that makes for the following conclusions which are as bad as the Boise is bigger than Salt Lake nonsense:
San Jose and Phoenix are bigger than San Francisco
El Paso is bigger than Boston and Washington DC.
Albuquerque, Tucson, Colorado Springs, and MESA, ARIZONA are bigger than Miami.

Also, I was looking at this measure of sprawl index in a study by the University of Utah 2 years ago (This link will open a pdf):
http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/measuring-sprawl-2014.pdf

This ranking seems pretty solid to me. Salt Lake isn't a prime example cities should follow when combatting sprawl, but there are so many cities that are much, much worse, particularly every city in the south and many cities in the midwest.

[linguisize]

Originally Posted by Marvland

This is a microcosm of the problem with SLC right now. Slightly off topic: I have a development that is fully planning/zoning compliant that has taken 18 months to get to pre-approved plat level. This is the main thing that is holding back development in Salt Lake City. Rant button off.

Interesting, Thanks. Don't turn the Rant of, I think this is a good addition to the conversation.

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by Future Mayor

The ribbon cutting for the Theater is scheduled for October 18th.

I do think you're right though on the sidewalk reopening any day now. I walked past is yesterday and it looks pretty complete to me. The curb and sidewalks were different than normal. There are section of the Main St sidewalk that actually two sections maybe 10' long that slope down to the street. Maybe it's for better valet access or Red Carpet walks, I'm not sure.

I peaked in the mid-block walkway and they are doing some work in there, they had something installed in the ground, put I couldn't tell what they were. This whole PAC, 111, Regent St project is going to have a massive positive impact for that area of downtown and downtown in general.

I've been watching this project progress every work day and I cannot believe what a difference it has made in tying the city together. As I've said before, visually, the skyline looks much more even and the time it takes to travel down Main Street feels shorter.

I think, moreover, what the Eccles Theatre and the 111 building remind me of is the resilience of Salt Lake City. Think about how many times we've had to reformat this city. It was an agrarian theocratic communal society built in giant cells intended to be self sufficient. Three decades later the founders and newer residents decided it was time to embrace a more mainstream American venture capitalist / secular government utilities path. From that time to 50 years later (the 20's) you have a very successful regional city that has the jobs and built infrastructure of a railroad mining boomtown.

When you look at Salt Lake City today it has very little of what originally made it successful. Thousands of jobs left when the railroads moved their operations out of the city, and the mining companies don't have any big offices located downtown anymore. And now, a decade and half after the massive move of the public away from physical newspapers to mostly free online news sources, we have demolished and replaced the printing press of our city and our metro. A massive liability that, just like empty US Steel factories, wasn't going to ever come back. Think of it like this. We lost hundreds of probably decent paying press related jobs (over this 15 year timeline of the decline of the press) and replaced them and exceeded them in hundreds of new better paying high end office jobs. And attached to it is a state of the art performing arts center showing off the fitness of our city right now. I think that speaks volumes for how much healthier Salt Lake City is as a destination of culture and jobs than it has ever been in its past, in any other previous version of itself.

Comrade and others have talked about how from the 20's to the mid 50's Salt Lake City didn't really change because it was pretty sustainable in what it offered and what people wanted from the city. I think now, after a failed attempt to remake the city in the 70's and this current partnership between the City, the LDS Church, and UTA that started breaking ground in 1997, we are finally approaching another version of downtown Salt Lake City that has the potential to sustain itself in urban improvement over the next few decades.

We have a Mayor and City Council members who really don't have any leadership or vision for the next step for Salt Lake City. A Mayor who cares more about increasing the ease of her travel from her suburb within the city to downtown over the actual increase of urban improvement and infrastructure in the city (i.e. more buses to Yalecrest and better timed street lights). But this is largely irrelevant now because the heavy lifting that needed to be done, has mostly been done, and we are now coasting on the success of the vision and leadership that was mostly shouldered by city leaders in the mid 90's (and somewhat by Becker with the Theatre) and the LDS Church in the mid 2000's. Even if we don't add more transit or add more to the critical mass of large uses and facilities downtown, the value of having a shop, bar, business, ect on Main Street and in the downtown core is secured.

What will be a real gamechanger for Salt Lake City is if we dare to have a vision for our city like we did in the mid 90's, but that means we need a new generation of people living here to get behind the next big idea. It isn't going to happen if we just stick to our community council tribes.

[linguisize]

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

What will be a real gamechanger for Salt Lake City is if we dare to have a vision for our city like we did in the mid 90's, but that means we need a new generation of people living here to get behind the next big idea. It isn't going to happen if we just stick to our community council tribes.

I think we're seeing that a bit right now, there's a lot of love and energy going towards making downtown a more livable and urban environment.
The theater is great, and I love what 111 does to our skyline as well, but a collection of random visitor attractions won't be what adds up to a future complex, livable, and energetic urban fabric.

Let's get some ideas now. What are your thoughts on potential next big ideas for downtown?

[Future Mayor]

Originally Posted by linguisize

I think we're seeing that a bit right now, there's a lot of love and energy going towards making downtown a more livable and urban environment.
The theater is great, and I love what 111 does to our skyline as well, but a collection of random visitor attractions won't be what adds up to a future complex, livable, and energetic urban fabric.

Let's get some ideas now. What are your thoughts on potential next big ideas for downtown?

What is truly going to make downtown more livable and vibrant is more residents and more workers. There needs to be more affordable, and I don't mean that in the 60% of AMI affordable I simply mean that in the market rate or maybe 80% of AMI affordable. The workers bring day retail business to downtown, but the residents results in the 24/7 or nearer 24/7 vibrancy of downtown.

The city needs to work closely with the GOED and the Legislature in creating real change in incentives given to businesses coming to the state and true impact fees or at least truer impact fees on development throughtout the state. What is the true cost of more homes in Eagle Mtn? More traffic on existing roads, and the need for future expansion, as well as the environmental impact on air quality. Those issues need to be addressed. I support development and I know people want to live in those areas, but they need to come much closer to paying the true impact.

I'm 100% in line with the idea of TIF being applied to more projects in the city, not just things like the CCH, or Vivint Arena. Providing 20 or even 10 years of property tax savings to a residential developer will reduce the cost of entry, resulting in slightly more affordable housing, due to lower overall costs for development.

The rules regarding impact fees that cities collect and how they are used also needs to be ammended at the state level. They are very restrictive on where and how they can be used, for instance they can't be used for upgrades to infrastructure or amenities, but must be used for new. This doesn't work in the city, because most of the infrastructure is already in place and simply needs updating, it is very sprawl oriented. That is why SLC had to give back impact fees because they weren't able to use them as governed by State law. I would guess that Provo, Ogden and Logan would especially be interested in having those laws tweaked. I'm all for impact fees being used in a geographic area around a development or for services/amenities that the development may use, as opposed to being used anywhere in the city, but the new needs to be changed. A couple of effective uses for impact fees could be for the establishment of more community gardens, spread throughout the city, as well as put towards city transit systems, including street car, bike share, car share, and upgraded bus stops.

The city could provide incentives along with the GOED to lure several different types of industries into Salt Lake City; Tech, such as EA, and finance, such as Goldman. These are just a couple of examples.

It is ultimately jobs and residents that will continue to spur the growth which will continue to result in more amenities like EPAC, and others.

Now imagine Main St of 10 years ago, vs Main St of today. The addition of more residents and more workers will transform many more streets from massive dead zones into vibrant and inviting corridors/gathering places.

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by linguisize

I think we're seeing that a bit right now, there's a lot of love and energy going towards making downtown a more livable and urban environment.
The theater is great, and I love what 111 does to our skyline as well, but a collection of random visitor attractions won't be what adds up to a future complex, livable, and energetic urban fabric.

Let's get some ideas now. What are your thoughts on potential next big ideas for downtown?

The big projects make the little ones possible assuming they aren't bad projects and don't ruin the possibility of smaller ones from happening.

It's great to focus on livability and making this place a better home to live and play in, but if we don't leave our tunnel vision focus on increasing property values in our little communities to facilitate more urban growth, we'll end up pushing more growth into the suburbs and stunting the potential density and intensity of our city.

I think we need to accept that TRAX as it was planned by UTA was a success in Salt Lake City. And that the Streetcar as it was planned by Salt Lake City, has been an embarrassment, not in wasted money, as it really wasn't expensive after grants and with the route, but it is an embarrassment in its usage. It is not a transit solution; it hasn't displaced cars, but rather, it's a scheme to make a certain community more valuable. That makes our city more livable, but it doesn't make it more accessible.

We made a choice to spend less to get more miles of TRAX and we have the advantage of abandoned freight right of ways and wide streets that other cities like Seattle and Denver don't necessarily have who have spent more. I think we need to look at the success and challenges of our very busy light rail system in Salt Lake City. We have 3 separate lines all sharing the same rail from the Best Buy to the Courthouse; this is also an area prone to accidents and delays.

1. I think our next big investment should be moving the Red Line away from the shared segment of tracks before it turns up onto Main Street. Just have the Red Line continue down 200 West until it hits 400 South and then have it shoot right up to the University of Utah. That would add much needed transit to an area with a lot of development potential. We need to transition that area from failed motels and hotels into higher density housing with mixed use.

2. In that same area I'd remove the People's Freeway. I'm not some anti car nut or anti freeway person but this road really is just one of those roads that has cars on it because it exists. It eviscerates an already challenged area and its removal would do wonders in helping to form a district in that part of the city.

[Future Mayor]

While I understand the desire to spread Trax out and like the thought process of continuing the Red line up 200 W, that is creating a very redundant system. Ideal transit station access is 1/4 mile and a little less ideal at 1/2 mile.

Putting the Red Line only two blocks away is placing it right in that ideal 1/4 mile radius of the Main St line. Yes I realize they are serving different destinations, but to me it still seems like it would be a bit of cannibalization. If the Red line were to move off the main line it would ideally need to be moved to 400 W, and then turning east on 400 S at Pioneer Park. Unfortunately that makes the trip to the U a bit longer adding a few minutes as the line is veers west for several blocks. This does however open up the entire Granary District and puts the line right in the heart of it.

My proposal would be to add a fourth line on the main line, all crossing grade separated and the fourth line veers west into the Granary District either directly north. I'm not sure where that forth line would start on the south end, so I really haven't thought this through. lol Maybe every other green line goes to Main and every other goes to 400 W, continuing up to the airport from there. Yeah that doesn't work, I'm just thinking out load here.

There have been two major short sighted decisions that could have really improved the overall light rail movement to and through downtown.
1) Gateway - The UP depot should have been the center of transit transportation, with all lines coming to and/or through that area.
2) N. Temple Bridge - When Central Station was built the green line really needed to come down 600 W, the big issue was the death of a nice little neighborhood along 600 W that now only consists of three homes, because the rest were torn down for the 600 W apartments.

Even the second shortsighted move would still make a direct line to the airport inconvenient. If the green line veered west, just north of ballpark or at 700 S in order to serve Central Station and the Airport, it would miss downtown completely and require transfers, but having only one Trax line and FrontRunner coming into central station doesn't really make it very central to the entire system. In all realty Murray Central is the most served station in the UTA Rail system, with Red, Blue and FR.

[Hatman]

I'm total transit obsessive, so here's my all-transit list:

1) Streetcars I've already proposed on the Transit Thread what I think is the best way to add streetcars into downtown and make the S-Line a relevant piece of transit infrastructure. Basically, in one big project, build a streetcar line on 2nd south and extend the LRT/Streetcar tracks from the intermodal center to the Ballpark station via 4th south and 4th west. Run streetcars directly between Sugarhouse and 2nd south. This arrangement makes for route that is both long enough and short enough for a streetcar to be useful.

2) 4th South TRAX Complete this line so that A) SLC can run a free circulator route around the downtown loop and B) A direct SLC-UofU line can increase the frequency of trains on the existing 4th south corridor. It would be great of the mythical BLACK LINE between the UofU and the airport would also start operation, so that there could be 3 lines on 4th south - 1 train every 5 minutes, just like downtown.

3) BRT/Bus Plus All bus stations downtown need to be built in the center of the streets, like LRT stations. This makes them visible and more attractive to riders; it also thins the streets and breaks up crosswalks for pedestrians who are just passing by. Then UTA could use BRT-style buses for ordinary routes, whether they have dedicated lanes or not. It would be nice if Bus Plus/BRT stations were also built outside of the downtown area, but not necessary, as BRT-style buses can stop at local stops too if they have to. Where there is demand, TRAX stations downtown can be extended to be the entire length of the block so that there would be room for both trains and buses at the same platforms, making transfers super easy. Building out a comprehensive and frequent bus system is the easiest way to add massive capacity to SLC's transit system (and thereby allow for more density downtown).

4) FrontRunner to Park City Imagine how great it would (hopefully will) be to get on a train at Salt Lake Central Station and get off at the Park City Transit Center! It would be so much better than a bus; a fast, smooth ride, unaffected by weather, with more comfortable accommodations (wifi, outlets, larger seats, restrooms, etc). People visiting Park City could casually swing by downtown to catch a play in the Broadway theater, or perhaps visitors would prefer to stay in Salt Lake City and take the train up to the resorts during the day. These two population centers/tourist destinations need to be connected as well as Ogden and Provo are connected to Salt Lake, because the potential is just enormous.