Downtown Salt Lake City redevelopment

Salt Lake’s downtown area has, like many major cities across the US, deteriorated in recent decades as businesses and homeowners have moved out into the suburbs, but now, even in the midst of one of the worst real estate crisis in recent history, a number of major Salt Lake City developers are turning the tide.

Salt Lake City will have an entirely different downtown area in the next few years as major residential and mixed-use developments and new condominiums come online. Well over 1000 residential units are under construction or in the planning stages with major developments such as the City Creek Project leading the new trend.

The City Creek Project is a collaboration between City Creek Reserve, Inc., Taubman Centers Inc., Harmons Grocery Stores and Cowboy Partners LC to redevelop 20 acres of downtown Salt Lake City, an area that will include three blocks of the city and see a number of residences, offices and retail stores added to the area.

This project alone is seeing over 700 residential units added to the downtown area, while enhanced office and retail space will provide close-at-hand services and markets to residents, as well as localised employments opportunities. These are some of the factors that are driving the resurgence in downtown living across the United States.

An increasing number of people ranging from university students and young professionals to empty-nesters, are moving downtown to be closer to public transit options and retail so that they can walk to markets they visit frequently. When coupled with mixed-use projects such as entertainment and leisure facilities like sports, theatre halls and community markets, the attraction of living downtown becomes more pronounced.

“Downtown is in the midst of a really remarkable time,” Jason Mathis, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, told Salt Lake City news media. “I’d say we're on the cusp of transformational change.”

Downtown Alliance is a collation sponsored by the Economic Development Corporation of Utah that promotes the appeal of living downtown and carrying out the majority of one’s activities within the vicinity of their home, promoting the opportunities to Live, Eat, Work, Shop, Play in the downtown area, the group’s website has a comprehensive overview of the economic development taking place in downtown Salt Lake City.

The developments taking place are many and have been pointed out by industry observers in the Salt Lake City news media as one of the primary drivers of employment in the city’s construction and realty development industries.

On the corner of 200 South and 300 East 73 new residential units are being built as part of the Liberty City Walk development, while 100 townhouses and apartments are being built in a project near Pioneer Park.

With many of these projects due to open in 2012 and later, project directors and investors are hoping that they’ll be opening into a market decidedly stronger than the current one.

“There was a slowdown in the market and there are a lot of units that are sort of in limbo in the market, but we're seeing more and more construction going on now in downtown housing units,” said Frank Gray, Salt Lake City Director of Community and Economic Development in an interview with KSL, a Salt Lake City news provider. “Over the next couple of years you're going to see that accelerate quite a bit.”

The demand for downtown housing options is not expected to be explosive, however. Forecasts released as part of publicity materials for the projects suggest growth in demand between 1 and 3% over the next thirty years. This means that by 2040 there may be an extra 40,000 to 120,000 people living downtown, making the city more balanced and diverse.