There is nothing blah about the Rico warehouse lmao
Just own up to the fact you're okay demolishing the historic fabric of Salt Lake for what'll likely amount to a cookie-cutter development that brings little to an area that can be wholly unique to the Salt Lake valley if effort was put into it.
But again, Salt Lake has no soul.
I guess at this point the hope is they can repurpose the building and develop the vacant lots. My problem with the current drive with what is happening in Salt Lake is that we're losing a significant amount of smaller buildings because developers, and the sad state of the city government, share the exact same mindset you do. It's not only the bigger historic buildings we need to focus on. It's the smaller ones, too, buildings that can be reused in a way that engages with the neighborhood and yet keeps its history.
Just a few weeks ago, we saw a similar episode with cluster of smaller, historic buildings on 200 South. Not very important but likely knocked down and replaced by a bland mid-rise with zero engagement with the neighborhood.
A few weeks before that, we found out this:
was going to replace this:
Again, not a major building. It's likely most everyone has passed it without even looking at it. However, it's once again something that has been apart of Salt Lake's historic fabric since the 1800s and it's about to be demolished for a bland, generic mid-rise.
That building, now a restaraunt, was one of the first (still standing) non-LDS Churches built in Salt Lake City. It opened as the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in 1892. It's now slated for demolition.
But this goes back to my point. It's easy to shrug your shoulders at the historic, smaller warehouses, or these smaller buildings, but they absolutely make up the fabric of a city. Go to any major US city and walk around and you'll see neighborhoods dominated with these types of developments. Sadly, Salt Lake is lacking in this regard. A significant amount of these developments came down in the 1970s and 80s for parking lots or modern warehouses on the city's west side and now, in today's environment, they're being torn down for basic development that is essentially going up in West Valley City and Sandy at this point. We lose that forever. Once it's gone, it's gone. And they make neighborhoods, in my view. Not that monstrosity of a development I just showed.
It's even worse when we're doing this despite vacant lands, or more recent warehouses/buildings that have long lived their purpose.
But none of the buildings I've mentioned have even remotely hit that point yet.
Like I said, in 30 years, Salt Lake will have no historic urban fabric left because we are perfectly fine doing away with these smaller, historic buildings. It's going to be a very bland, ugly place.