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Originally Posted by TheGeographer
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Interesting snips from that article:
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The Point’s construction will be some of the densest seen anywhere in Utah, rivaling that of downtown Salt Lake City, according to Abbey Ehman, a spokesperson for Innovation Point Partners, the consortium of development firms teaming up with the state.
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With Utah in the midst of a dire lack of affordable homes, the plans also call for more than 3,000 multifamily units — all intended as state-owned rentals at this stage.
Up to 20% of those dwellings will be kept more affordable, with a stated intent of creating a new community “for Utahns from all walks and stages of life.”
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The Point also centers on mixing land uses, with no more than half the acreage devoted to residential and with homes threaded closely with commercial spaces.
She and others said that mixed-use approach — and reliance on two planned transit stations serving The Point on a specially built TRAX extension — are central to The Point’s success.
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Demolition of the old prison started last month and will stretch well into next year.
After installation of critical utilities for The Point, vertical construction could begin as early as 2026, although officials say that will be flexible and driven by market conditions.
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ADDITIONAL RENDERINGS:
Disclosure:
I know there are going to be a few that will try and say this is not relevant to this thread. I disagree since this is a discussion on the impact a large 600 acre megaproject may have on Salt Lake City development in the future. Just putting up a disclosure first because I know at least someone is going to say it doesn't belong on here. But so few people actually use the MSA thread to discuss issues related to the impacts of development outside of Salt Lake on Salt Lake that I think it is important to have that discussion here as well. I will keep my post to how I think it will impact Salt Lake though.
Anyway
My thoughts:
From a Salt Lake City development perspective, I think The Point is unlikely to cause significant losses for Downtown Salt Lake City. This is because I think these developments would have likely occurred in office projects in the suburbs regardless of being built at The Point. At least The Point will help to centralize this development rather than disperse it.
Three aspects mentioned in the article actually has reassured me that we will not see a decrease in development due to it.
The first is the low number of actual residential units planned for the first phase of the development. 3,000 units, while large for a single development, is not much when considering how many units Salt Lake has been building. By my own personal count, Salt Lake City has about 8,000 housing units currently under construction and over 12,000 housing units planned for a total of over 20,000 units in the works. So the 3,000 units planned as part of the first phase The Point is almost embarrassingly low and will likely not even make a dent in the residential development in Salt Lake.
The second aspect that reassures me is its starting to appear the Trax extension is not only still on the table, but may be becoming likely (as opposed to the BRT that was discussed by UTA for the site), at least based on the article. If the State funds and builds the Blue Line TRAX extension, that will essentially create a direct line connection from The Point to Downtown Salt Lake City. With so few units being actually built at the point (at least by what we can tell based on the first phase), there will likely be a significant amount of commuters to the project. While many will commute via car from the suburbs (just as they do to Downtown) if that Trax extension is built many may choose/want to live in Downtown Salt Lake and take a direct commute from there to The Point for work.
Essentially if that TRAX extension is included in the project after all, it could actually help boost development and demand downtown rather than take it away. Plus, the more and more people that move downtown, the more there will be a natural demand and a pull for office development in Salt Lake in the coming decades, so I'm not too worried. But that TRAX extension would basically put The Point much more in Salt Lake City's sphere of influence than a BRT, which would likely drag it more towards the suburbs and northern Utah County's (and therefore Provo's) sphere of influence. So getting that TRAX extension to become reality is essential for Salt Lake's future development prospects, at least in my opinion.
Third is the fact that the earliest we may see vertical construction is 2026 which may be pushed back or delayed even further depending on funds and market conditions (as the article mentions). So we will likely not see people even being able to move into the first phase until basically the end of the decade (around 2028-2030). It seems to me that this development will be so slow to actually develop that any negative impacts from the project may be so spread out to be basically negligible, while the positives for Salt Lake City could be great.
My feelings may change as we start to learn more specifics on what the rest of the phases of the project will really include, but even then we are talking about way into the 2030s and 2040s on how this project may or may not impact Salt Lake.
For now, I think Salt Lake City and development Downtown is pretty safe, beyond the impacts of market forces.
Anyway, what to y'all think? Could The Point and Salt Lake City coexist without harming eachother too much? Or will The Point prove too irresistible?
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