Broadway experiment closing in on reality
By Doug Smeath
Deseret Morning News
Salt Lake City's Broadway Boulevard is just that — a broad street in the style of Brigham Young's famous decree that streets should be wide enough for an ox cart to make a U-turn.
Courtesy Salt Lake City Engineering Department...to also include landscaping, medians and other features. Courtesy Salt Lake City Engineering DepartmentA photo illustration shows how 300 South would evolve from midstreet parking... Four years ago, Mayor Rocky Anderson started an experiment to use that width for something other than more lanes of traffic. Today, Broadway, also known as 300 South, is known for a unique feature: Cars park and pedestrians walk right down the middle.
The experiment, it appears, will become permanent, as $1.5 million has already been allocated from the city's Redevelopment Agency. That amount is expected to cover only part of the improvements.
City engineers and planners are in the process of coming up with preliminary design concepts so the city can begin soliciting bids to find out just how much the entire project might cost. Anderson then plans to ask for additional funding.
His vision is for the medians to offer more than just additional parking. He hopes construction on the center-street parking will include a host of other features intended to make Broadway, from 400 West to 300 East, a distinct street running through a distinct district.
"We wanted to take it to the next step to create a charming, unique, identifiable district, a place that had its own identity in the downtown," Anderson said.
The administration's idea, at this point, focuses on making the midstreet corridor more pedestrian-friendly, both practically and aesthetically. Anderson envisions trees and other landscaping lining median sidewalks, pedestrian-level street lighting, raised walkways and electrical outlets to allow for special holiday and seasonal lighting.
"It has a different flavor," the mayor said. "To tie all that together would be something I think would work very well. It would be a place visitors would remember about Salt Lake City."
But City Councilwoman Nancy Saxton, whose district includes downtown, isn't so sure.
"I'm not wild about making the center area permanent, with barricades and planters and all that idea," said Saxton, who would have a vote on additional funding when the council acts as the RDA board. "As I've talked to people over time, the center-street parking has actually deterred people from traveling those streets. I don't like to travel those streets either. It feels so tight, and it doesn't feel safe driving a car down those streets."
She also worries that, as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints begins construction on a massive downtown redevelopment centered on the site of downtown malls Crossroads Plaza and the ZCMI Center, the timing of more construction just a few blocks away would be a problem.
Saxton said the Broadway area is an important sales-tax generator for the city, with a number of local businesses that are thriving. She said the street already has a "nice walkable feel to it" but that car traffic also needs to be accommodated, as businesses rely on customers who drive, as well.
One business owner, Tony Caputo of Caputo's Market and Deli, thinks Anderson's plan would only help business.
The area, he said, especially on his end of Broadway — to the west, near Pioneer Park — suffers not so much from a lack of amenities as a skewed, negative public perception.
"This is kind of like a big city down here. We've got a lot of different ethnic things going on. It's not a strip mall," Caputo said.
He played a big part in revitalizing the area near his store, including an Italian community center surrounded by bakeries, an Italian market and housing. With the Palladio Apartments and older housing like the La France Apartments nearby, as well as the planned Broadway Park Lofts, Caputo believes the area is on the upswing.
"It will be nice not to have the population disappear at 5 o'clock," he said.
He believes the midstreet parking makes the area an inviting neighborhood. Without the medians, he said, the wide street is "like 400 South — it's like a freeway. And that's all well and good if you want to be on a freeway."
Broadway includes the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center and is part of what city and county officials foresee as being a cultural-arts district. The Rose Wagner currently has temporary sculptural artwork in the medians in front of the theater, and Anderson said he would like to see public art like that become more permanent in the district.
But Saxton wants the city to take its time in planning out such districts, making sure they fit into an overall vision for the city.
"Oftentimes we decide, outside of good planning principles, that this is something we want to do, but it doesn't necessarily fit with the bigger plan," she said. "We have so little money, we have to use it prudently and take some time and think it out and not have a knee-jerk reaction."
what do you guys think? I personally like the idea of more parking downtown. I also like the feel of having trees lining the center section. It gives it a better feel, than an all asphalt road.
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