...Continued - Downtown, La Porte Project
Quote:
Originally Posted by UTPlanner
For those interested in the RDA project on State Street, there was some more detailed plans given to the RDA during their last meeting. Here's the link: http://www.slcrda.com/meetingsmin/20...rtePSAmend.pdf Just scroll down and they have elevations along with a floor plan of the ground level. It appears that the existing children's theater will be moved and operate out of a restored Rex Theater. I think this is a great infill project.
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La Porte Groups proposal
Restoration of historic Rex Theater key to LaPorte development
By Andrew Haley
Historic Rex Theater, by Shipler Photography
On the night of April 6, 1912, Harry Shipler took a photograph of dozens of moviegoers lined up under the brightly illuminated facade of the Rex Theater at 257 S. State St. in downtown Salt Lake City. The Rex formed a crucial part of film pioneer and Universal Studios co-founder William H Swanson’s Mountain West movie theater empire, which, after the 1915 purchase of Albert Scowcroft’s Liberty and American Theaters, consisted of a near monopoly. Cinema was a nascent business a century ago, and Shipler’s photograph captures the glamor and wealth the movies represented to a budding frontier town.
The LaPorte Group president Ben Logue wants to return the Rex Theater, hidden within the Tivoli Gallery for decades, to its former state of grace. With the debate surrounding LaPorte’s redevelopment of the 200 block of State Street focusing almost exclusively on the situation of tenement residents in the Regis Hotel at 253 S. State, little mind has been paid to the Rex next door. Lost amid the brouhaha has been a historical perspective on the past and potential vitality of the location and an
honest appraisal of the historical value of the Rex, the restoration of which is central to The LaPorte Group’s development plans.
“We want to keep the character of the neighborhood, and by character
I mean the prior, not current, character of the neighborhood,” Logue
said.
While negotiations with potential theater tenants continue, Logue said the reincarnated Rex likely would either be a children’s theater or a cinema. Whichever the case, the revitalized theater, restored to its 1920 condition, will adjoin a new 10-story apartment building connected by a two-story arcade linking State Street to a new plaza fronting the historic Cramer House on Floral Street. All in all, the project will contain 157 mixed market-rate and low-income housing units, two levels of subterranean parking and two floors of dedicated commercial space in the arcade and plaza, Logue said.
The $28 million redevelopment is slated to begin in fall 2010 and to take two years, meaning the restored Rex Theater facade may be finished in time for the centennial anniversary of Shipler’s photograph. Part new construction, part restoration, the gist of the plan is to build the new residential tower at 235 and 241 State St., to restore the Rex and the Cramer House, to link State and Floral Streets and to renovate and expand the low income housing units in the Regis and the lesser known, adjoining, Cambridge Hotels.
Advocates for the Regis’ former tenants cited the long relationship between the dilapidated hotel and its residents as cause to prevent or delay redevelopment of the 235-257 South stretch of State Street. But one Redevelopment Advisory Committee (RDA) official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the hotel was already in desperate need of acomplete overhaul, and that relocating the Regis’ tenants was a fait accompli. Furthermore, the 200 South block of State Street
has been stagnating for decades, in large part because pedestrian traffic has long avoided the businesses adjoining the Regis.
“I think they realize it needs to be done,” said RDA director D.J. Baxter. “As it redevelops we want the form to be more pedestrian friendly.”
Key to LaPorte’s plan is to develop an urban interface pedestrians are drawn to and return to. In Shipler’s photo, the facade of the Rex, with its brightly lit white marble and Greek statues, draws theater-goers not only to the films inside, but to the theater itself. LaPorte’s design, which will restore the theater’s characteristic zigzag awning and Greek statues adorning its facade, strives to make that attraction permanent, by combining a substantial residential population with mixed-use commercial space within walking distance of downtown offices.
Logue said he envisioned LaPorte’s State Street project as antipodal to the billion-dollar City Creek project currently under construction four blocks away. Logue said he hopes the two projects would operate like a circuit, bringing residents of one to the commercial space of the other. Reopening a unique and attractive entertainment venue like the Rex will provide an incentive for non-residents to patronize the theater’s adjoining commercial space.
Increasing the number of residents in the central business district, especially young professionals, is vital to increasing the long-term viability of downtown enterprises like those slated to fill the 27,600 square feet of commercial space set aside in the project’s arcade. To this end, the project’s residential space will sport 31 two-bedroom two-bathroom 1,600 square foot apartments and 10 three-bedroom, two-bathroom 1,800 square foot apartments to be rented at market rates. The dilapidated/ rooms of the Regis and Cambridge Hotels will be renovated and expanded to 116 low-income units comprising 45
650 square foot studios, 37 one-bedroom, two-bathroom 1,200 square foot apartments, 30 two-bedroom, two-bathroom 1,600 square foot apartments, and four three-bedroom, two-bathroom 1,800 square foot apartments.
Those latter figures should be evidence enough that Salt Lake City-basd LaPorte’s design does not consist of the typical slash and burn gentrification project built on the backs of the disenfranchised. When the Regis closed its doors in March, 25 residents were evicted. The site’s redeveloped low-income housing will provide space for nearly seven times that number.
The Cramer House will not return to residential status. Built as a personal residence by florist Christopher Cramer in 1890, the building is the oldest surviving pioneer-era dwelling in the central business district. Logue said the 1,800 square foot house would likely become a restaurant accessed from the plaza on the newly revitalized Floral Street, just behind the Rex.
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