Salt Lake City wants to sell a former community garden near the Gateway to fund the infrastructure needed to build up the Rio Grande District.
The Community Reinvestment Agency of Salt Lake City (CRA) is set to issue an RFP later this year to put 2.33 acres over four plots on the market, CRA staff said during a meeting Tuesday with Salt Lake City Council Members.
The land is located along 100 South between 600 West and Dansie Drive. It’s currently zoned as Gateway-Mixed Use (G-MU), a zone that includes a minimum height of 75 feet and a maximum of 180.
The CRA land falls within the agency’s Depot District that was established in 1998. The land is the former home to one of the Wasatch Community Gardens’ largest urban farms, as it was known as the Green Phoenix Farm, according to a CRA staff report on the property. Currently, the soon-to-be available land includes a vacant house, a vacant barn and a self-storage building that’s occupied. The gardens moved out several years ago when an adjacent proposed project was moving forward.
Council Member Dan Dugan asked why the CRA wants to sell the property rather than offer it as a long-term lease. Dugan was concerned about the idea of selling the land, as he said it’s expensive for small businesses to lease commercial space and selling the land to a developer would only cause those rates to increase.
Austin Taylor, a CRA project manager, explained during the meeting Tuesday that the CRA believes property should be sold rather than leased. He said the funds would go toward building crucial infrastructure for the Rio Grande District, adding the project needs a significant amount of money to move forward.
“They have streets to build, pipes to put it in, shared parking garages to build — so that’s why we’re proposing to sell it, rather than ground lease it, for that one-time cash infusion that we could get from it,” Taylor told the City Council on Tuesday.
A rendering of the potential uses for the 2.23 acres being sold by the CRA. The subject land could feature vertical farming and a residential building with ground floor artist space. Image via Community Reinvestment Agency of Salt Lake City
Taylor told Dugan that the city could put a deed restriction on the property to try and keep retail rents down, but that move would devalue the property. A CRA staff report says the property could fetch around $13.7 million, or $135 per square foot, and the CRA is proposing that figure as the listing price.
The CRA wants the 2.33-acre site to be developed into housing — preferably for-sale or family sized units — along with required “artist space” on the ground floor. Taylor explained the use and rendering comes from the Rio Grande District Plan, and the artist space could be studio space, gallery space or performance venues.
Just behind that building, the CRA also wants an “indoor, dense farming use” building, Taylor said, which came out of Rio Grande stakeholder discussions. The vertical farming element would be a nod to the site’s former use as an urban farm.
The CRA staff report also says the owners of the property immediately to the east, a 1.1 acre vacant plot, are interested in selling, and, “CRA may publicize the opportunity to purchase these properties along with ours at the owners’ request.”
Council Member Darin Mano, who also serves as the CRA board chair, said selling the property at market rate gives the city less power to ask for public benefits. However, Mano said it’s not a terrible idea to move forward with this course of action, as the CRA will need more funds in the near future for projects.
Mano said that future city budgets are expected to be a bit tighter, and selling off certain properties to prioritize city involvement in other plots could become a more common tactic taken by the city.
“We may have to make these hard decisions of, ‘do we want to sell a property and extract fewer public benefits in order to get money,’” Mano said. “It’s an important conversation, but I think it’s an unfortunate conversation we’re going to have to have more and more in the next few years if we want to keep these projects moving forward.”
No action was needed from the council members, as the discussion Tuesday was informational. The CRA is still planning to move forward with putting the land on the market and soliciting proposals. Once the RFP is live and accepting proposals, the CRA is expected to review and rank those pitches sometime in early 2026. After that, a development partner would be selected sometime in Q2 of 2026.
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