Ten months after taking over a shuttered hotel that was set to become supportive housing for low-income Salt Lakers, the Larry H. Miller Companies is moving forward with plans to demolish the North Temple building at the Power District.
The development group has made quick work of launching a bid to land a Major League Baseball team, obtaining public subsidies for a stadium, pushing forward zoning changes and assembling a large swath of private land near where it wants the stadium built.
Its next move is to tear down a former Ramada Inn hotel at 1659 W. North Temple, which was set to become home to low-income housing and was the long-time home of a popular Indian restaurant called the Star of India.
That restaurant will now temporarily move to the Ballpark and hopes to open its doors again in a strip mall at 1000 S. Main this month, its owner told Building Salt Lake on Monday morning.
“We’re going to be OK,” the owner said. “It’s a little tough.”
The restaurant closed abruptly in August after apparent thieves stole wiring from the building and robbed its source of power. The restaurant had been preparing to relocate to a building under construction down the street at some point next year.
But the theft and power outage resulted in the loss of thousands of dollars of food and a source of income for the restaurant’s owners.
Now vacant, the Miller group is moving to push forward its plans to wipe the property clean. The developer submitted for a demolition permit on Sunday.
A developer had secured a long-term lease with the property owner and began accumulating millions of dollars in state and local subsidies to convert the hotel into supportive housing before hitting delays with the city.
It’s still unclear what led the developer — who had amassed enough subsidies to cover about a third of the anticipated cost of the project — to abandon the effort.
Around the same time, the Millers were buying the remaining privately owned land that isn’t owned by the state or Rocky Mountain Power in the Power District, as they were pushing ahead with their vision of a mixed-use neighborhood supporting a potential future MLB team.
The Legislature created a mechanism to collect public money and direct it to improvements near the potential stadium. It also required the city to reach a development agreement in support of the vision to improve the Fairpark and the Power District by Dec. 31. If the city and Millers don’t reach an agreement by that date, the Power District won’t be subject to city zoning rules.
That work to update zoning for the area is now moving through City Hall, and the Planning Commission last week sent a positive recommendation to the City Council.
In September, the Miller group formally requested the city to create a new zoning type that would allow buildings up to 400 feet tall in the roughly 93 acres known as the Power District.
The Millers initially secured the Ramada developer’s long-term lease and bought the property outright in July, property records show. A separate filing shows that the Millers have reached a development agreement with Rocky Mountain Power.
In a statement, the Miller company acknowledged the purchase and said the land would be incorporated into the broader development of the area.
“Larry H. Miller Real Estate purchased the Ramada and will incorporate that land into the master plan of the Power District, which will be complementary to the Fairpark’s master development plans,” the company said.
It’s not immediately clear what might be in that development agreement, as previous renderings from the Power District showed renderings of buildings that were much shorter than 400 feet.
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