A rendering of the Rio Grande District, with Downtown seen in the background. Image via Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency.
A plan to upzone nearly two Salt Lake City blocks in western Downtown is complete.
The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a rezone and master plan amendment for the Rio Grande District, which consists of 35 parcels that are owned by either the city’s Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) or the University of Utah. With the master plan and zoning amendment’s approval, those parcels were rezoned from Gateway Mixed Use (G-MU) to Secondary Downtown Zone (D-4).
Height and design standards are the big differences between the two zones, as the area’s updated zoning allows for heights up to 200 feet by right and up to 600 feet via design review. The G-MU zone has a maximum height of 180 feet. For reference, the state’s tallest building, Astra Tower, is 450 feet.
The updated design standards hope to ensure the larger buildings in the area are compatible with the surrounding area. The general plan amendment updated the city’s existing Downtown Plan, and updated the area’s plans for midblock walkways.
Renderings and plans shared in years past paint the area as a potential extension of Downtown, complete with skyscrapers and a large number of new housing units, parks and public art spaces. One anchor in the neighborhood would be the future home base of USA Climbing.
Council members offered little comment before unanimously voting to approve the proposal, though they did have a handful of questions for city staff during a work session meeting in February.
During that meeting, Council Member Eva Lopez Chavez asked if the Utah Transit Authority still planned to extend rail lines along 400 West instead of a block to the west. 500 West could be the potential home of the buried rail lines at the center of the community-led Rio Grande Plan, which seeks to bury train lines and restore the former train depot to its former use.
“I just want to bring it up, because, and I know Council Member (Dan) Dugan is in contact with the Rio Grande Plan and the different advocates from it, but it’s my understanding that there’s different proposals for this area, so I would love to be inclusive of those future development opportunities, and I’m a bit sensitive to that,” Lopez Chavez said.
Nick Norris, the city’s planning director, said he believes the state’s plan is to have any new TRAX lines along 400 West, which would be known as the Orange Line.
Council Member Alejandro Puy said the rezone proposal would allow the city to move closer to the CRA’s vision for the Rio Grande area. He said there’s been plenty of talk around the city to carry out the community-led Rio Grande Plan, but added that city and CRA staff told council members that any changes to the streetscape were the last thing that would happen in the area. Puy said the city would need money before building that sort of infrastructure.
A rendering of the Rio Grande District seen from 500 West.
Though some money for infrastructure will come from proceeds of a pending land sale north of the rezoned land, CRA staff told the council that selling land won’t be commonplace. Wayne Mills, CRA senior project manager, said during the February meeting that the CRA plans to offer long-term ground leases on city-owned properties, done in the hopes of having more of a say in development projects and collecting fees for maintenance.
In light of the rezone, the CRA plans to demolish a warehouse in the Rio Grande area’s northern block this week. The warehouse, located on the southwest section of the block near the corner of 600 West and 300 South, will be torn down Thursday, according to a CRA spokesperson.
What’s still unclear is how recent events could impact the prospect of burying rail lines. City staff previously told Building Salt Lake that recent adjustments to the mayor’s Green Loop plan would not interfere with the Rio Grande Plan, and efforts to improve 500 West are a shorter-term project for the city.
But more recently, the state legislature’s last-minute move to transfer ownership of the Rio Grande Depot to the University of Utah has led to rail advocates calling on Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to veto the move. During a news conference last week, Cox said he doesn’t see the land transfer as a threat to the Rio Grande Plan.
“We’re not selling this to a private entity, it is still a part of the state,” Cox said. “So as those plans are developed, if we’re able to get the funding and do something like that, we would still want to pursue that, and we would work with the University of Utah to do that. They’re aware of those potential plans and this would not prohibit that at all.”
Cox added the building transfer to the university is a way to move the project forward, as he said the building sitting vacant would be a detriment to the Rio Grande Plan proposal.
“Not only do I not see this as an opposition to what they’re proposing, this will actually help us in the long run to get us there,” he said.
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