What Salt Lake City’s downtown really needs — and how the new sports district could help

Downtown Salt Lake City had its own major transformation underway well before the prospect of a new sports, entertainment, culture and convention district came up.

A dramatic rise in its 24-hour residential population continues to boost street activity along with visits to downtown’s everyday amenities, hot spots and attractions.

The historic trajectory has doubled the number of downtown residents in a few years with much more to come — while helping to counter another commercial shift from a drop in office occupancy during the day as many professionals work from home.

In terms of urban attributes, the city’s resilience and growth with those pandemic-accelerated trends draw from some important roots. Planners say Utah’s capital enjoys a lot of crucial ingredients viewed as vital to keeping any downtown vibrant, lively and thriving: mixed uses, walkability, transit access, green spaces and, of course, a diverse and healthy economy.

Utah’s living room, as the city center is called, also has some long-identified challenges, such as navigating its long blocks, barriers to east-west access and a lack of public parks.

The multibillion-dollar stadium, sports and entertainment district now being pursued by Smith Entertainment Group, owner of the NBA’s Utah Jazz and a new NHL team, has taken a major step forward with the City Council’s endorsement of a pact between the city and SEG, setting the stage for a half-a-percentage-point sales tax hike to pump $900 million toward its completion.

In a thankful joint statement penned with SEG, Mayor Erin Mendenhall praised the council for its support in creating “a more activated, connected and family-friendly future for Salt Lake City.”

So when it comes to basic urban design, could the new taxpayer-funded district proposed for three blocks east of the Delta Center help address some of downtown’s wants and needs?

Making downtown more lively — and livable

The knock on downtown was always that there was little to do, especially on Sundays.

SEG’s proposal, lately dubbed the Capital City Revitalization Zone project, makes a high selling point of retaining and cementing the central business district as a dynamic commercial and cultural core of the city and state — largely by retaining the Utah Jazz as an economic engine for another 30 years and welcoming a pro hockey franchise.

Keeping and growing the number of downtown residents with help from a job-generating economy have long been goals in city master planning, but those are happening already, apart from whether SEG’s vision takes hold.

“There’s a bit of a false premise here that downtown needs revitalization,” said Alessandro Rigolon, associate professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah. “There’s been a tremendous construction boom, with public and private investment.”

Those thousands of new apartment dwellings built since 2019 have already started to turn the heart of the city into more of a neighborhood. The growing numbers are also amplifying demand for a range of personal and household services — from restaurants and recreation to pet groomers, playgrounds and dry cleaners as well as safety and police protection.

A central economic question, then, is: How might a new stadium and cultural district integrate with those trends, help build community, and lift future commerce of all kinds within and beyond its borders?

The answers, several planning experts said, depend on how it balances serving as a statewide destination and catering to its more immediate urban surroundings — which it doesn’t do so well now.

Several blocks adjacent to the Delta Center are pretty much long and uninteresting concrete hallways that don’t dovetail with nearby streetscapes. And if the proposed entertainment district is similarly insular, it could fall flat.

“Adding several hundred thousand square feet of merchandise, food and beverage INSIDE the Delta Center contributes absolutely nothing to the community or to local activation,” said Brenda Scheer, professor emeritus of architecture and planning at the U. and a member of the city’s planning commission, which rejected the proposed zoning shifts in SEG’s plan.

Scheer fears for existing hospitality businesses, saying the new glitzy district could suck away commerce.

“Far from benefiting,” she warned, “they will die.”

Sketches from SEG show it is seeking to design the district’s central areas to improve connectivity across adjacent blocks to the east — and eliminate key street obstacles such as 100 South, created by the Salt Palace Convention Center.

Its executives also voice commitment to mixing a variety of uses in the district, including residential, out of an intent to raise all economic boats — and to establish desirable public spaces amenable to all ages.

That all-encompassing approach could prove key to overall downtown health.

“If we want to make a downtown suitable for families [a principal Mendenhall aim], we think about all the day-to-day offerings that a good neighborhood has,” said Molly O’Neill Robinson, a former city planner who now works in private practice. “It’s going to be proximity to green spaces, proximity to jobs, transit and schools.”

Under the state law making it possible, the SEG proposal also includes loosening limits on proximity between bars and restaurants licensed to serve alcohol and neighborhood assets such as public parks, libraries and community centers.

“It becomes a huge hurdle,” Robinson said, “when we’re talking ways of helping to make downtown a lot more livable and softening some of that hardness.”

Making it greener

The SEG-city agreement also calls for new gathering places at the center of the district, including outdoor event spaces, walkways linking with public streets and landscaped features.

Besides making the gathering spots more appealing and suitable, the hope is to increase vibrancy and off-hours traffic — when there isn’t a Jazz or a hockey game drawing thousands.

Aside from the spiritual spots at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ popular Temple Square, the public spaces at Gallivan Center and the lush lawns of City Hall and Pioneer Park, the city’s current choices for public gathering places are, Robinson notes, decentralized.

Led by Mendenhall, the city started closing portions of Main Street to vehicular traffic as a boost to restaurants and retailers. That has blossomed into a push to convert sections of Main permanently for pedestrians. The city has also promoted fleshing out a Green Loop circuit of linear parks connected to the urban core.

The new SEG plan puts ample spaces at the center of its two-block development, according to the contract, to be owned and operated commercially by SEG and offering places for free use between May and September for community festivals and events.

According to SEG executive Mike Maughan, the company vows to create “an active and welcoming space for individuals and families to gather in Salt Lake City’s downtown core.”

It’s unclear, however, whether the space might serve as a “main central square” in downtown, according to city Planning Director Nick Norris.

“This space,” he said, “should include a lot of vegetation, trees and a variety of activities for visitors of all ages, so it is a place that people will go for those amenities in addition to all the other entertainment venues in the area.”

Making it easier to get around

Pioneering Latter-day Saint leaders originally laid out their new Zion with what are now some of the largest blocks and widest streets of any U.S. city. That is a big part of its oft-mentioned challenges today in being more pedestrian-friendly.

Urban planners and transit experts offer mixed views on whether SEG’s vision could help with that and open up east-west connectivity for pedestrians and motorists through downtown, long identified in city plans as a goal.

The newly approved “participation” pact with SEG puts more detail to opening up 100 South as a through street by demolishing parts of the expanded Salt Palace, along with new public art and other amenities to commemorate Japantown and protect its remnants.

The 100 South punch-through is part of a second phase for the district as it rolls eastward, so it could be many years away. Still, it is almost being likened to tearing down a Berlin-like wall dividing the city in two.

“This is very significant,” Norris said of removing the barrier. “Right now, someone would have to walk nearly a half-mile to get to a point that is only about a tenth of a mile away. This discourages people from walking and essentially cuts off the east and west sides of downtown.”

Many urban planners agree it could greatly improve vehicle, bike and pedestrian flows through that stretch and, to a lesser extent, beyond. Related plans to take 300 West underground near the Delta Center could also promote walkability within the district, according to a spokesperson for the grassroots group Sweet Streets, “but not immediately surrounding it.”

Many note, though, that SEG’s emerging plans give scant attention to a more granular network of new midblock walkways, adequate crosswalks and protected bike lanes to and through the fledgling neighborhood.

For one thing, it might be missing out on breaking up the city’s whopper blocks.

“I would consider any project that doesn’t address that as not satisfactory,” said Rigolon, the associate U. professor of planning, “from the perspective of a downtown permeable for pedestrians.”

Cycling advocate Dave Iltis noted that a traffic analysis included with the SEG participation accord leaves out bike lanes and support facilities on crucial east-west arteries throughout the area.

“There’s no mention of transit, there’s no mention of bicycling and no mention of walking,” Iltis said. “It is solely focused on cars, and that is a huge mistake for a project that’s going to bring people downtown.”

The plan is also a far more limited step compared to breaking down formidable transportation barriers between the city’s more extended east and west sides — obstacles created by Interstate 15 and the vast rail yards spanning the 500 West and 600 West corridors. Only 200 South in that vicinity reaches all the way from State Street to Redwood Road.

“We’ve been joking lately that they kind of stole our angle,” said Matthew Givens, a proponent of the Rio Grande Plan, which envisions streamlining and burying rail routes in that corridor to open up east-west streets and intersections.

“They’re talking about making a connection east-west through downtown,” Givens said. “What we’re saying is east-west through Salt Lake City, which goes beyond that.”

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