It was an important week at Salt Lake City Hall for entitlements and subsidies for USA Climbing’s National Training Center project at 300 South and 500 West in the Rio Grande district.
The project’s design team, led by VCBO, was seeking nine exceptions to the zoning code in its design review application at the Planning Division.
The Salt Lake City Mattress Company building, left, and the main entrance to USA Climbing’s National Training Center on Market Street. Image: VCBO
In addition, the developer’s request for an additional $250,000 – $1.3 million to fulfill the CRA’s requirements for the reuse of the Salt Lake City Mattress Company building was due for a decision. The CRA has pledged $6 million for the adaptive reuse project.
Let’s see what happened at those meetings.
Planning Commission – Unanimous ‘Yes’ despite bad news
The six commissioners present asked a number of questions, which brought some significant updates from city staff on the CRA’s Rio Grande project, formerly known as Station Center.
Most revealing was the threatened status of Market Street (350 S), a key east-west connector in the CRA’s plans for the area.
Credit: SLC Planning
Planning Staff explained that because of property ownership issues, there’s no guarantee that Market Street will get built as a thoroughfare. The properties to the west are owned by the University of Utah.
Salt Lake City’s Planning Director, Nick Norris, told the commission that if Market Street can’t go through to the west, “It probably becomes some kind of, essentially a fire access lane, to be frank, and to access parking.”
Planner Wayne Mills confirmed that project designers and the city are preparing alternate scenarios for Market Street. In those cases, the southern side of USA Climbing’s project and its main entrance would front not a street but a cul de sac.
After crafting language that would guarantee that the south facade of the building maintains its planters, commissioners voted 6-0 to approve the designs.
CRA Board – Press pause, we want more options
The long shadow of a past policy decision has loomed over options for the CRA-owned parcel offered on a long-term lease to USA Climbing. The non-profit that sanctions competitive climbing in the country has located its HQ in a rented warehouse in the Rio Grande district since 2018.
That policy decision was to insist that developers design their project around the adaptive reuse of the two-story, 11,000 sf Mattress Company warehouse.
As such, the Board of the CRA, the city council, has been presented with two options that carry notably different price tags. Keeping what remains of the existing building, stabilizing and restoring it, for $7.3 million, or tearing it down ‘brick by brick’ and rebuilding it to mimic the original for $6.25 million.
Credit: SLC CRA
On Tuesday, members from a majority of the city’s seven districts voiced concerns about the decision. The Board subsequently pressed pause on the decision.
Two Council members – Sarah Young (D7) and Erika Carlsen (D5) expressed doubts about the city expenditures. Young, representing Sugar House, commented, “This is like a one-time help you out, but I’m not really interested in entertaining in the future, ‘Hey, by the way, we found more issues’.”
Carlsen, representing Ballpark, asked staff, “Is $250,000 really a make or break on the project? If it is, it raises alarm bells for me about the overall financial viability of the project as a whole.”
The council member who represents the district, Alejandro Puy (D2), and the adjacent Downtown representative, Eva Lopez Chavez (D4), both suggested that the cost of rebuilding the Mattress Company building may not be worth the sacrifice in tight budget times.
Council Chair Puy asked, “Are there other ways to rebuild this or to include some of the historic materials, like was brought up by Council Member Lopez Chavez, or like completely changing the direction with a modern building, brought up by other council members here? So, like, I’m open to more options than just those two.”
CRA Board Chair Dan Dugan brought context to the discussion, offering “Preserving historic buildings has always been more expensive than, you know, scraping a building.”
“But that also comes with a price of scraping the buildings and scraping your history. So we have to weigh that as a council.”
No vote was taken on the appropriation requests. Board Chair Dugan directed CRA staff to huddle with Board members in small group meetings to discuss additional options to address the Mattress Company building issue.
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