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Originally Posted by EPdesign
So given all the development that is planned or currently happening salt lake, do you feel that the threat from a city like Sandy creating a business district to rival salt lake is still as prevalent as it was in the early 2000s? Asking anyone.
IMO it seems like downtown Salt Lake is more established now than say 1998. I remember with the loss of the malls it seemed that downtown’s future and Sandy developments were a “scary” time. Now, even if sandy or Draper or silicone slopes got a tall building or buildings, downtown Salt Lake would be able to exist without it suffering devastating effects from such a development. I could be wrong.
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Yeah, Sandy has remained very suburban despite its clear aspirations to be some kind of second downtown. Really, the only potential contender to downtown left is the prison site redevelopment in Draper but we have seen that vision get scoped down to the point where it's basically going to be an office park with some low/mid density housing and green space. Lehi has turned into Utah's version of the Denver Tech Center and, given the recent NIMBY uprisings there, it looks like that won't be changing anytime soon. The forces of suburbia have held all of these cities from truly challenging SLC.
My question is this: are there actual people out there that
want Sandy or Draper to be a bigger/better urban center than SLC? Or more likely, are there forces that are actively trying to keep political power in Utah more decentralized? I could be wrong about this but I think that once control of SLC was lost to the "gentiles" in the early 20th century, many LDS folk wanted (or want) to de-emphasize SLC in Utah politics.
In the 1990s, I could imagine people wanting to leave downtown SLC because of its general urban decay and the dominance of car culture. You can still see this attitude in comment sections of news articles: some people with very loud opinions have clearly not actually been downtown in many years. The reality is that downtown has rebounded and, with amenities like City Creek, the Gateway, TRAX, the U, SLC International, etc. as well as a booming food & beverage culture, there's no conceivable way any other city will be able to catch up in terms of urbanism. I agree that this is a similar-sounding story to Denver.
The Rio Grande Plan would definitely reinforce SLC's urban reputation. Right now, (without the RGP) Murray Central is better-positioned to be the hub of the rail transit system than SL Central.
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I don't think this has come before the city council or planning commission (yet). There's a chance they could deny the conditional use permit because this doesn't fit the intent of the CB zone. I'm not 100% sure if that's in the cards though. 
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