Census data for SLC: Downtown booming / Latinos leaving the west side / New apartment dwellers disproportionally white
Both Downtown and Sugar House – located in City Council Districts 4 and 7 respectively – have seen healthy apartment booms in the last decade. One of these, Downtown’s District 4, led the city’s council districts in population growth from 2010-20, adding 6437 new residents.
Which doesn’t surprise, given the number of apartment homes that have been built Downtown, most at market rates.
This map shows how many residents were added in each City Council district. The darker grey in the center is D4, Downtown, adding 6437 residents, and the rust brown is D2, which lost 912 residents – the only district in the city to shrink in population.
Standing out from the data is the relatively low population growth numbers in Sugar House and District 5, the latter which includes the Ballpark and Liberty Wells neighborhoods. South of Liberty Park and extending west to I-15, District 5 have seen a significant increase in townhome and small apartment developments, plus several large apartment projects in recent years along 300 West.
A theory on the low population growth in D7 Sugar House (1736 new residents) and D5 Ballpark-Liberty Wells (1032)? Those numbers will likely look a lot different when projects in process are filled with people, and won’t be counted until 2029.
It’s no secret that the “Sugar Hole” is only now being filled with viable buildings providing housing – with more on the way.
What stands out for development watchers in the city’s 2010-20 demographics?
In a presentation this month from Mallory Bateman of the Gardner Policy Institute at the U of U, the City Council heard about population and demographic changes in the city. The Council is legally required to act on the data to redistrict itself into equally-populated city council districts, with no obvious racial bias.
The city went from 66 to 63% White (“Non-Hispanic”) from 2010 to 2020.
“Hispanic” or “Latino”, the city’s largest ethnicity behind Whites, is shrinking – 22 to 21%. The loss of population is concentrated on the west side (D1 and D2) and the I-15 corridor in Central City (D4) and Ballpark (D4).
On the other hand, one can point to the incremental growth of Black, Asian, and “2 or more” or “Some other” race.
What about growth by City Council district? Here are the figures, with the number and percentage of new residents that are White.
| District | 2010 population | 2020 population | Increase pop total by number, percentage growth | Increase pop in White residents by number, percentage of growth | |||
| 1 | 27505 | 28032 | 527, 1.9% | 65, 23.6% | |||
| 2 | 27306 | 26395 | -912, -3.3% | 35, 12.8% | |||
| 3 | 26302 | 28573 | 2270, 8.6% | 387, 17% | |||
| 4 | 26716 | 33153 | 6437, 24% | 3361, 52% | |||
| 5 | 25404 | 21936 | 1032, 4% | 211, 20% | |||
| 6 | 26546 | 28767 | 2221, 8.3% | -294, -10.2% | |||
| 7 | 26132 | 27868 | 1736, 6.6% | 589, 34% |
Editor’s note: This post has been corrected. A previous version referred to “Hispanic” and “Latino” residents as synonymous with “Spanish-speaking,” which is incorrect.
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