Top officials of the newly created UFAIR District, empowered by the state Legislature to oversee the new taxing and development entity that includes the Utah State Fairpark and the Power District, have come out against including affordable housing in the 93-acre development project on North Temple being led by the Larry H. Miller Real Estate Group (LHM).
In a letter delivered to the city’s Planning Director Nick Norris before this week’s City Council work session on creating a new zoning district for the area, UFAIR Board Chair Scott Sandall and Executive Director Benn Buys staked out a position in direct conflict with the desire of west side City Council members to include workforce housing in the development.
The letter comes at a time when City Hall and LHM are not only negotiating the contours of the new zoning district, but sketching general terms for a development agreement that would include community benefits desired by city officials. That agreement is not being negotiated currently, and will include the UFAIR authority, and if a Major League Baseball franchise comes to town, Stadium officials as well.
State legislation established a Dec. 31 deadline for the zoning district to be approved. If the city doesn’t approve one by the deadline, LHM can develop the area on its own without regard for the city’s zoning rules.
Under that state-mandated pressure, the city council held another work session discussion this week to hash out how they want to see the area develop.
Council holds firm on setback maximum and design standards for buildings on interior streets
We reported last week that LHM had pushed back on Planning’s 15-foot setback maximum, presumably wanting to maintain maximum flexibility in site design. City staff reported that LHM agreed to a prohibition on parking lots between the public rights-of-way and buildings. That apparently is a losing proposition, as the City Council agreed unanimously in a straw poll to include the 15-foot maximum setback along public streets in the new code.
A lingering question has been whether the city would require design standards on interior streets, or just on North Temple and Redwood Road. Both the Planning Commission and Planning staff recommended that the proposed design standards be applied to all structures that face public streets and publicly-accessible open space.
During the discussion, Norris told the council, “The reason that we have design standards is to activate public streets.”
“One of the things we also have a concern with is there’s not a decision yet on whether any of the internal streets will be dedicated as public streets,” Norris said. “Our preference for the code is to say that [design standards] apply to all public streets and not call out North Temple and Redwood, specifically.”
“In the future, if a new street was dedicated, it would mean that no design standards would apply to it.”
Proposed Design Standards
- Ground-floor active use % minimum – 60%
- Ground-floor active use + visual interest % – None (i.e. no substitution of art for active use)
- Ground-floor glass % minimum – 60%
- Blank wall maximum length – 25’
- Street-facing facade maximum length – None
When strawpolled on Tuesday, council members voted unanimously to apply the standards to interior public streets. If built, the stadium will be exempt from the requirements.
In addition, the Jordan River frontage will not be addressed in the new code. Nor will the Riparian Corridor Overlay, which requires setbacks from the river, be enforced. City Hall and LHM are leaving those details to be hammered out in the development agreement.
As the Council discussed streets and development standards, Chair Victoria Petro mentioned, “I wonder if this might create a perverse incentive for…” but then stopped short of her comment.
Watching the meeting, it was not hard to finish that sentence: ‘For the developer to create only private streets.’
‘An extremely heavy residential plan’ with nothing below market-rate?
Last week at the City Council, a representative for LHM used the term “extremely heavy residential plan” to describe the developer’s intentions for the Power District.
Officials at City Hall want that plan to include affordable housing, and are leaning on the development agreement to get it done.
On Tuesday Petro again expressed her housing priorities for the project.
“I would like to continue to push for workforce [housing] in the district,” Petro said. “I realize that what I’m asking for comes at a price, and the negotiation is ongoing, so I don’t want to put anything additionally onerous on them than we would put on any other development happening in the city.”
She and Alejandro Puy, the other west side city council representative, have been pushing for affordable housing in the development. They are going to have to push a lot harder after UFAIR’s letter.
In the letter to Norris, Sandall and Buys said that they believed requiring affordable housing in the district didn’t “align with the highest and best use of the limited space available.”
They note that 20% of the tax increment produced by the UFAIR District, of which the Power District is a part, will be earmarked in state code for “moderate income” housing (defined as 80% AMI or less).
“We expect this to represent a significant investment once the area is fully developed,” they wrote. But, they add, “We feel this should be outside the JRF district.”
LHM officials told us that they “would like to reserve comment about specifics until we further advance all discussions.“
We asked Petro and Puy whether the UFAIR letter would hurt the chances for workforce housing in the Power District. They did not directly answer the question but told us, “We are actively collaborating with LHM Group to identify opportunities for incorporating much-needed workforce, missing middle and family-sized housing within the UFAIR District. Our goal is to prioritize housing options that support our workforce residents, enabling them to live in the communities they serve.”
Editor’s note: This post has been updated.
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