Salt Lake City planners are on board with a developer’s plan to build a mixed-use mass timber building in the core of Sugar House.
Harbor Bay Ventures is asking Salt Lake City to create a new zoning district, known as MU-15, which would allow for sustainably built buildings that stretch up to 15 stories high. It wants the city to apply that zone to the site of a former Wells Fargo bank at 1095 E. 2100 S.
The building would be about four stories taller than what’s currently allowed under existing zoning. But the developer said its additional height and sustainability requirements would allow it to provide space for local businesses and about 325 residential units.
The proposal’s next stop is before the Planning Commission, which will hear the concept at its meeting on Wednesday. Salt Lake City planners told the commission in a new briefing ahead of the meeting that it should give the project a thumb’s up.
“Planning staff finds that the general plan and text/zoning map amendment meet the standards, objectives, and policy considerations of the city for amendments and therefore recommends that the Planning Commission forward a positive recommendation to the City Council” with slight modifications, the staffers wrote in a new memo.
That support comes despite staffers saying the developer hasn’t proposed enough benefits for the community. Those details could be worked out in tandem with the developer, who will have to receive the support of the City Council before moving forward with the project.
“Currently, Planning staff does not believe the proposed community benefits meet the policy requirements,” the staffers wrote. “The City Council has full discretion to review their proposal and determine if a community benefit would be achieved through the adopted [sic] of the MU-15 zoning district.”
The concept for a new 15-story building with ground-floor retail space meets enough other city goals that the commission should send a favorable recommendation to the City Council, which will ultimately decide the matter, the planners wrote.
The Chicago-based Harbor Bay has backed away from its original request to create a new zoning district that would have allowed buildings up to 305 feet tall on the site. The firm later said it never intended to build a structure that tall and in July revised its formal request.
Harbor Bay has maintained that it wants to create a mixed-use development and that additional height would allow it to provide more units and retail space.
“The first floor is being designed to embrace the walkability of the neighborhood and to create further street level activation to support the adjacent local businesses within the Sugar House Business District,” Harbor Bay CEO Mark Bell previously told Building Salt Lake in a statement.
Harbor Bay Ventures hasn’t released any designs for what its concept, likely holding off on incurring those soft costs until it has more clarity from the city around what it can build at the site. But it has been refining its proposal and provided Building Salt Lake with more details about what it intends to build if approved.
It’s also asking the city to amend the Sugar House neighborhood plan, which doesn’t support the increased height or density.
Still, the city has long since chosen the area near 2100 South and Highland Drive as the core of its second most intense urban district outside Downtown.
Like the existing zone, buildings in the MU-15 district could be 75 feet tall without needing additional approval from the city. They could stretch up to 155 feet if they receive approval through the city’s design review process.
The new zone would fall within the city’s new transit context for parking mandates. That would mean any new building wouldn’t be required to include off-street parking. (Though lenders are generally reluctant to provide loans to projects that don’t include parking, and market rate projects frequently include more parking than required.)
The setbacks would be similar to the existing zone, with none required.
City staffers noted that other property owners could ask the city to rezone their properties to the MU-15 zone after it’s created.
They’re also set to brief the Planning Commission on Wednesday about an ongoing effort to consolidate existing commercial and mixed-use zones into a handful of form-based zoning codes in an attempt to simplify rules for future development.
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