Developers debut plans for historic Warm Springs building
The Warm Springs Plunge building has had several lives. The historic building on the 800 North block of 300 West has been both a bathhouse and a children’s museum and now is poised to become part of a large, mixed-use affordable housing development.
On Thursday, May 18, Woodbury Corporation, in collaboration with the Salt Lake City’s Housing and Neighborhood Development Division (HAND), will meet with the Historic Landmark Commission for a work session on plans to restore the Warm Springs building and construct a new seven-story residential building and four townhomes.
When it was built in 1921, the Warm Springs building was referred to as the Warm Springs Municipal Bath, a city-run bathhouse. The city piped in hot sulfur water from nearby hot springs into several pools in the Warm Springs building. In 1932, the city changed the building’s name to the Warm Springs Plunge, the name the building would carry until the baths closed in 1976.
Generation X and older Millennial residents will remember the Warm Springs building as the home of the Children’s Museum of Utah from 1983 to 2003 before museum the moved to the Gateway.
According to planning documents, Woodbury submitted a project proposal to HAND in 2016 with plans to connect a renovated Warm Springs building to new construction, 112-unit residential building. The plan would have included both buildings sit above a subterranean parking structure.
After evaluating costs the developers decided that it would be best to separate the buildings. Woodbury’s current plan for the Warm Springs building is to restore the historic structure for commercial use and build a 125-unit residential building directly east of the Warm Springs building with four attached townhomes directly south of the new residential building.
The Warm Springs building will remain relatively intact with the buildings west front entrance and north and south side entrances remaining. When restored, Woodbury reps estimate the Warm Springs building will have around 38,000 square feet of leasable commercial space. The developers opted for a commercial use as it would allow for more flexible floor plans that complement the building’s interior spaces. While most of the building’s interior spaces will be retained and restored, the developers plan to fill the pool areas so that they can accommodate commercial tenants.
The residential building will consist of a two-story concrete podium and five floors of wood-framed residential units. The units will be a mix of studio, one and two bedroom apartments. As currently designed, the residential building will connect to the Warm Springs building via a landscaped, pedestrian plaza. The pedestrian plaza will also connect the north and south sections of Warm Springs Park. The current plans for the residential building include a third-floor courtyard above the parking podium with a fire pit, outdoor kitchen, bocce ball court, water feature and covered seating.
The four townhomes will each have two bedrooms and a two car garage.
The parking structure will be accessed from the north side of the project with surface parking on both the north and south ends of the Warm Springs building.
Since Thursday’s meeting the HLC will be a work session, the commission won’t be voting on the project but will instead give advice and guidance to the project’s architects on how to best restore the Warm Springs Plunge and build new construction that complements the historic structures.
