Construction starts on downtown apartments


Salt Lake City residents are used to a lull in construction activity after a project finishes, but these aren’t normal times and in many neighborhoods once on project finishes another is just beginning.
For example, the Liberty Crest Apartments, a seven-story 177-unit residential building by Cowboy Partners, is nearly complete. But a block to the south on the 200 South block of 200 East, preliminary construction has started on the Morton, an eight-story mixed-use residential building planned for the 200 South block of 200 East.
The Morton is Seattle-based developer’s, Timberlane Partners, first new construction project and third property in Salt Lake City. The developers own the former Artspace shops on the 300 West block of Pierpont and The Mercer, a four-story 73-unit residential building on the 500 East block of 300 South.
According to the developer, the apartments will be designed with an open floor plan with floor to ceiling windows. Most of the amenities will be at the penthouse level and will include a clubroom, fitness room, yoga spaces, pet terrace and grooming room and a community rooftop terrace.
The Morton will replace a 0.63-acre surface parking lot just north of the Russon Brothers Mortuary. The $21.5 million, 120,000 square-foot project will consist of 137 residential units and 1,400 square feet of retail space. The project includes a two-story parking podium with ground-floor retail below six stories of residential space. The project will have 100 parking stalls, 0.73 parking spaces per unit, and the units will be a mix of studio and one and two-bedroom apartments.
The Morton will maximize the lot size and will be built right up to the street level and to the adjacent buildings to the north and south.
Now that construction has started, the Morton brings the total of residential units under construction in downtown Salt Lake to an estimated 1,200 units. In addition to the 1,200 units underway, another 1,000 downtown residential units have been completed since the fall of last year. Those projects include Liberty Crest, Alta Gateway Station, 360 Downtown, Paragon Station and the north wing of the 4th West Apartments.


*This is an updated version of a previous post.