Many in Salt Lake City and the greater Wasatch Front are eagerly awaiting what Downtown could look like in the coming years.
Between the Salt Palace Convention Center overhaul and plans to build an entertainment plaza, the Smith Entertainment Group is at the heart of all that redevelopment. Though there is no detailed public plan, SEG executive Mike Maughan shared his thoughts and mindset on the impending Downtown overhaul at the ULI Housing Summit last week.
Maughan spoke with Darlene Carter, CEO of Cole West, about the future of Downtown Salt Lake City — as well as planned entertainment plaza.
Maughan said that on Wednesday night, just before the ULI event, he met with Mike Leavitt, who was governor during the 2002 Winter Olympics. Leavitt told Maughan the most important 10 years for the Olympics are the 10 years before the event itself. That’s when the most sweeping changes can occur, and paves the way for a successful Olympic games and the future of the surrounding area.
“I said, ‘I think that’s true, but I respectfully say I think the most important are the 25 years after,’” Maughan told the audience. He added that both mindsets can be true, but keeping those future years in mind “is how you fundamentally transform the city, the state, the county for generations to come.”
Maughan views the entertainment plaza and Salt Palace renovations as opportunities to unite the city’s core, as the convention center effectively separates the eastern and western portions of Downtown. He likened Downtown to his teeth in fifth grade: all over the place.
“Downtown Salt Lake has teeth that are kind of all over the place right now,” he said. “So part of this is putting braces on, creating this amazing paseo that will reconnect the east and west sides of Downtown Salt Lake for the first time in generations, where we can reenliven some of that activity.”
While there is no detailed plan to consider, the high-level concept so far has included rebuilding the convention center and reconnecting the heart of Downtown with its western edge, which has long been cut off by the sprawling convention center.
Maughan later explained the Delta Center and the surrounding area are more activated than ever, and the future plans will only add more of a draw.
Before the Utah Mammoth came to town, the Utah Jazz’s 41 home games and a handful of concerts were the only draws to the arena. But in the future — between the Jazz, Mammoth, another UFC fight and a rebuilt Salt Palace — that activation will keep growing, Maughan said.
The Salt Palace, which only has one ballroom, was “built wonderfully in its time, and it’s not incredibly functional anymore,” he added.
“A huge chunk of the Salt Palace is used like four times a year, so by demolishing a portion of that, redoing it with a second ballroom revised meeting space, we’ll move from a million to 2 million people every year coming to the Salt Palace,” Maughan said.
The entertainment plaza will cause even more of a draw, too. Maughan also noted there’s plans to build a 6,000-seat indoor concert venue in the area with Live Nation, which would activate the area even more.
An early concept plan for the entertainment plaza.
With all these plans, Maughan said it’s also important to keep neighbors in mind. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will reopen the Salt Lake Temple around the time that work will begin on the Salt Palace, as both are slated to take place next spring. But there’s more neighbors around than just the church.
“We’re talking to the LDS Church, but of course we’re speaking to the Buddhist Temple and the Japanese Church of Christ,” Maughan said. “We’re talking to the county. We’re talking to the Ritchie Development. We’re talking to Gateway. We’re talking to everyone who’s around us in that immediate proximity because we don’t want to create something in isolation.”
Conversations with the Japantown community, he added, have led to changes in plans.
SEG doesn’t own the north side of what he called the “mid-block” — which would essentially be a Fidelity Investments building, a parking lot and the Radisson Hotel along South Temple. Plans have also called for burying 300 West, similar to the current state of 200 West. However, UDOT isn’t planning to bury 300 West and is moving forward with a partially sunken concept for a part of the block next to the Delta Center, instead.
Because of those factors, Maughan said an initial plan called to have all that traffic directed toward 100 South, which is home to the Japanese Church of Christ and the Buddhist Temple.
“Every time there was a 6,000 seat concert venue, it was going through there,” he said of the initial plans. “Every hotel guest, every person living in any of the apartments, every person dining, every person going to any of the retail. They didn’t love that. I didn’t love that idea.”
Maughan said SEG doesn’t want to be the neighborhood bully. So now, he said, “instead of 100% of traffic, we’ve reduced the traffic on that small street by 80% by redesigning how we’re doing 200 West and 300 West, because we want to do something that is functional for Salt Lake City for generations to come, not just what’s good for us.”
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