Salt Lake City: Official Development News Thread - Part 5

[bob rulz]

Dixon is without a doubt the best new residential development in the city. I can't wait for Sugar Alley and the Post District!

[Atlas]

Design review for 150 S Main (Theatre Tower) has been rescheduled for the next PC meeting on July 14. I went back and checked their entry on the city portal and, lo and behold, they submitted a new design review package on June 28. No new renderings of the building itself but there are more solid plans and new renderings for the park. Looks like they moved the elevator closer to Main Street, probably because city councilors have expressed concerns about ADA access in the past.















I would expect the Save the Pantages troupe to show up at this meeting to shit on this proposal (even though the design review has no bearing on the land transfer deal), so if you're in favor of this project I would encourage you to submit positive comments to counterbalance the negativity.

[Atlas]

Also, it looks like there have been some updates to the BRIX design to make the street face of the building more attractive. They haven't submitted any new documents to the city portal but the information sheet on the SLC planning website has these renderings which are noticeably different than the ones we saw before:

[scottharding]

That's much improved from the first look we saw a few months ago. I like it.

[RC14]

Build it. ( this applies to both the Brix and 150 S Main.)

[Utah_Dave]

Recursion biotech is looking to expand 100,000 sqft of space in the gateway area. They took over the old Dicks sporting goods store that was converted to office space. There is a good article in KSL about it. It’s good to hear a good and rapidly expanding biotech company has a large and growing footprint downtown.

[delts145]

Originally Posted by Atlas

Also, it looks like there have been some updates to the BRIX design to make the street face of the building more attractive. They haven't submitted any new documents to the city portal but the information sheet on the SLC planning website has these renderings which are noticeably different than the ones we saw before:

So much better compared to the original.

Original

[Ironweed]

Originally Posted by delts145

More of this please.

https://www.kier.org/our-work/multi-...ce-apartments/

I could not agree more Delts. Like many others on the forum have pointed out, it is the best new apartment building in the SLC area.

[allh]

Holy hell, the original BRIX design looks like it belongs in the 80's.

[EPdesign]

^^^
I agree with the 80s comment. It’s funny how slight changes can make the difference. I like the update a lot! It makes me miss the concrete metal building on main with the seagulls sculpture. I like the solid look of this.

[felixg]

I recently found this photo from 1924 of NYC's famous Park Avenue, and immediately thought of state street and/or west temple. Looks like most pedestrian seating/walking space has since been removed in favor of more traditional landscaping, but I think the idea of those original mid-street sort of mini plazas is an interesting one and could effectively tame some of the high speed traffic north of 400 S. Our streets are so wide, I wonder if small vendors and food trucks would have enough room to set up on certain days or times, possibly creating a vibrant street scene without sacrificing cars altogether, like main street has done recently. Could be a nice compromise

Anyone know if there have been actual proposed plans in the past to make our wide downtown streets more approachable to pedestrians? I'm quite new to the forum, apologies if this has already been discussed

[Atlas]

Wikipedia says Park Avenue is 140 ft wide and SLC actually has standardized 132 ft wide streets, so we actually have room for things like Park Avenue on all of our main grid streets. Actually convincing the city/state to remove traffic lanes on State seems like a tall task though.

Anyone remember the idea from awhile back of developing buildings in the medians in SLC? The group behind it (Kentlands Initiative) seems to have gone silent, unfortunately.

Here's an aerial view from June 29 that I found on Twitter:



Also, here's a view of northern Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho from space last week:

[taboubak]

Well that image really helps you see that our lake is shriveled up and dying. Also mid block retail buildings would be awesome on state or West Temple. We really need to do some drastic stuff to make our city more walkable.

[Utah_Dave]

Originally Posted by taboubak

Well that image really helps you see that our lake is shriveled up and dying. Also mid block retail buildings would be awesome on state or West Temple. We really need to do some drastic stuff to make our city more walkable.

I don’t know…. Looking at that photo I think I see some mid block retail on State? Hard to tell, it could be Main Street. I can’t zoom in close enough

JK. Lolololol

[Orlando]

Originally Posted by Atlas

Design review for 150 S Main (Theatre Tower) has been rescheduled for the next PC meeting on July 14. I went back and checked their entry on the city portal and, lo and behold, they submitted a new design review package on June 28. No new renderings of the building itself but there are more solid plans and new renderings for the park. Looks like they moved the elevator closer to Main Street, probably because city councilors have expressed concerns about ADA access in the past.















I would expect the Save the Pantages troupe to show up at this meeting to shit on this proposal (even though the design review has no bearing on the land transfer deal), so if you're in favor of this project I would encourage you to submit positive comments to counterbalance the negativity.

As much as they dress this park up, I still have doubts that it will be successful. I've said this before, but I think they need a cool through-block passage at-grade and going through the parking structure.

[Blah_Amazing]

Originally Posted by Orlando

As much as they dress this park up, I still have doubts that it will be successful. I've said this before, but I think they need a cool through-block passage at-grade and going through the parking structure.

I think the stuff they are adding is pretty cool and very unique for Salt Lake. So its success will really depend on how much of a destination it can become.

Honestly, one of my main concerns is that it still doesn't seem like they plan to cover the sides of the parking garage with anything. That garage will be extremely visible from West Temple and leaving it as an exposed parking tower would look really bad. There are a lot of cool decorative options that they could pick to better hide the parking levels that I'd like to see them deploy, such as a greenwall (not sure how well that does in our climate) metal covers, or decorative wood slats. Anyone else feel they should at least cover the parking garage?

[Blah_Amazing]

Originally Posted by taboubak

Well that image really helps you see that our lake is shriveled up and dying.

I'm really worried that I am going to live to see the end of The Great Salt Lake. I hope not, but we keep taking water from the rivers that feed into it, so it is going to happen eventually.

A NIMBY argument that I see all the time is 'there isn't enough water for all these apartment buildings and towers.' Except families living in apartment buildings are WAY more water efficient than their single family counterparts by a long shot. Honestly, if everyone in the SL Metro lived in apartment towers and not in hundreds-of-thousands of single family houses with yards and lawns, and if we could get agriculture under control, we wouldn't even think about water as a major issue at all.

[Blah_Amazing]

I found a website that had some really nice renderings of the Station Center project.

The renderings were new to me, but they may have been posted by somebody else and I missed it, idk. I thought I would post just in case. Full-size images under spoiler tags.

https://loci-slc.com/portfolio/station-center

They seem to be a lot more detailed than others I have seen in the past.

It's likely the designs will still see changes, especially considering the addition of the University of Utah to the area. But I really like what I have seen so far.































Full-size renderings (unadjusted)

Alternate Renderings with Street Market setup along pedestrian paths (Full-size)

[Atlas]

Nice, those are higher resolution than I've seen. That part of the city will really be transformed in the next decade by the RDA project and all of the new housing. Hopefully we can get some momentum going on the Rio Grande Plan before something is built that precludes it. For now, it's still officially considered a "barrier to development." The other possibility that has been floated is using the Depot as a permanent home for the farmers market, which is also less cool than using it as a train station in my opinion. I hope that the farmers market instead gets a nice building directly west of the fully-functional Rio Grande station.

I think the designers showed those renderings at an RDA meeting back when they were presenting the idea of making the promenade west from the Rio Grande less linear. The last map shows the older idea of a straight-line promenade lined with trees while the renderings show the newer idea of a more chaotic, less traditionally straight street. I'm not sold on the latter idea, personally, and I like the look of a straight, grand avenue that frames the Rio Grande with trees.

[meman]

Has anyone heard the groundbreaking date for Astra Tower??