Construction starting on Sugar House townhomes
Sugar House residents living near Simpson Avenue may not be getting a new shelter but they will still have to navigate construction for the next year or so. Demolition work is finished and construction will soon begin on Liberty Place, a large townhome development by Cowboy Partners.
The project, Liberty Place, will consist of 70 townhomes on a 1.72-acre parcel at the 600 East block of Wilmington Avenue directly north of the S-Line. The townhomes will be dispersed among eight buildings, with 61 two-bedroom units and nine one-bedroom units.
The project will replace an office building and surface parking lot. The townhomes will be three stories (35 feet) in height and include a one car garage. The project’s townhomes will front Wilmington Avenue, 600 East and the S-Line.
The townhomes will have the garage and storage space on the ground floor with the living area, kitchen and powder room on the second floor. The bedrooms will be on the third floor and in both the one and two bedroom units each bedroom with have a private bath.
According to the project’s architects, Arch Nexus, the townhomes are designed to engage with the S-Line streetcar and greenway. The project includes a public mid-block walkway that will provide pedestrian access to the S-Line via Wilmington Avenue. The development also features a small landscaped plaza at the site’s southeast corner that will abut the greenway and include bike racks and a fire pit.
The project is located in the FB-SE (Form Based Streetcar Edge) zoning district as part of the Sugar House Streetcar Corridor Master Plan that the City Council approved in June. The FB-SE zone allows for building heights up to 45 feet.
According to City planning documents, the project will be instead developed under the area’s previous CB (Commercial Business) zone. The CB zone allows for building heights up to 30 feet. The planned development approval will allow the developers to add the additional five feet as well as reduce the required rear yard setback of 10 feet to eight feet to allow the project to be closer to the S-Line.
The Liberty Place townhomes are across the S-Line from the site of a now-cancelled homeless resource center. Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski originally announced four locations for new resource centers in December including a site on the 600 East block of Simpson Avenue. But after severe pushback from neighbors, the mayor decided to move forward with just two resource centers, removing the Simpson Avenue and a downtown location from consideration for the new centers.
*This is an updated version of a previous post.
