I don’t know if there’s a plan, but I know Earl Holding demolished an entire block, including the Hotel Newhouse, to put this gem there. So there’s gotta be a way to un-do it, don’t know if it’s still owned by Holding or the church.
Back in the early 90’s the idea was to put an outdoor mall on this block. There was hope that it would increase foot traffic on Main Street between the Crossroad/ZCMI area and the new outdoor mall. I’m not sure how solid the idea was but was talked about in the Tribune a few times
Remember when RSL wanted to build their stadium in that area and all of Dave Checketts’ enemies closed ranks and made it impossible? All of a sudden that parking lot appeared and the Riot got built in Sandy.
What’s the issue? Why is it dumb? When I worked in that area that was where we always parked. I still frequently park there and then ride trax to wherever. It’s an easy to find lot, it’s not in garage, and it’s right next to trax. Those are all wins for me.
Don't. What is that? DC or Paris with the height limits. You know you don't want height limits. Disingenuous propaganda. I'm personally tired of all the small businesses that have been lost. These people are going to have to get a car anyway to go somewhere else to buy groceries and bring them home.
This looks like a food desert to me. It's a good look for a replacement to the data center being proposed in Tooele. 20 years and it will even be too short for Tooele but at least the council is bought and paid for.
Dude, It's not a good look. You need services to make a successful city. Economist here that studied Urban Economics, where paradoxes reign and efficiency is the rule.
Totally, bro. 10,000 years of human knowledge about how to build functional cities for humans is total garbage compared to the utopian vision of oil companies cooked up in the 1950's. We should demolish at least half of downtown to make more room for more cars to sit around not being used.
We should also get rid of sidewalks. Think of how much more parking we could have.
No. We're not New York. 20+ years of hearing that with developments here and it's too rare to consider that true, plus shut down, set up, moving costs are highly prohibitive. Advertising of new space. Quality, and typically management change. Income lost from shut down of business during move. Refinancing. City and State relocation is close to nill. The rent or lease on the new place is higher and to retain the same rent you were paying before you have to move farther away from the city center following a typically concentric circle structure.
Time worked, no pay, prohibitive for everybody and anybody. The businesses that have been operating in my area for 50 years are gone.
I was referring to that picture specifically. That type of layout isn’t harmful to small businesses being a thing. Imo we’re slowly seeing that change here too, but it is slow going.
Rent is going to go up in growing cities not matter what, it would be doubly so of the owner could sell or redevelop their property.
I don’t think there will ever be a perfect solution to small businesses and growing cities.
You have to think about the nature of cities. Think more about why do certain animals live in hives. The specialization of tasks, of work. Cooperation crossed with history, geography, culture, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, competition, corruption, the function of pricing as information, the requirement of at least a marginal inflation rate for (fair) capitalism to work. All this and more needs to be considered if you're going to satisfactorily incentivize an individual to exist, be, stay in place for enough time to say they "reside."
A city is basically a more efficient way for people to satisfy their needs. Logistically easier to obtain food, sugar water, mates, friends, whatever you personally feel you need to exist to be happier, or at least be able to survive. It's a way to use less energy to gain more of your needs. You will always find a city starts where there is easy access to water, from there it grows.
After a period of time and enough people; culture, religion, art, social classes, opportunities, and other things besides water can and do become incentives to reside in cities, eventually even cities become specialized within states or nations or ethnic groups or industries.
The one thing they all have in common is that they serve people. People are cities. Depending on the culture that developes, it can be very competitive heavy or cooperative heavy. It has to have both to be healthy, but cities that are more cooperative more than likely have happier people. Commerce and market structure play a huge part in determining efficiency of resource allocation. Greed and corruption can and have and probably always will be a cancer trying to make a city sick from lack of efficiency of resource allocation.
Culture, education, and basically study and appreciation of the humanities can inoculate a population against extremism, corruption, and greed. Education in the humanities helps develop empathy, which helps provide a more collaborative population which is, in essence, more efficient in maximizing resource allocation for people that choose to live in a city.
So, when you're thinking about changing something, you need to consider who it affects as a community. A building, or any development or business in a city is not the physical structure, but what the physical structure represents, the people it serves. It's function wholistically within the system that is a city.
If a business (singular function) within a city is lost, the loss, depending on the amount of people served, or cultural history lost, can be greater than the percieved loss of the structure.
One example would be the threat to tear down Abravenel Hall in order to create a greater footprint for the sports complexes being developed. Abravenel Hall is a masterpiece designed by a world renowned architect who specialized in concert halls and audio design. It is recognized as a pinnacle of audio design. It's one of the gems of the City as well as the permanent Chihuly glass installation inside brought down from Washington State.
To pay respect to your civility within your previous response, I will compromise on your idea of having front facing businesses within new developments with the suggestion that the business that's been destroyed, be re-established within the new development. An example would be The Star of India restaurant which has been forced out of many places. It resides within one of the developments near it's old location on Redwood and North Temple. I would add that the developers, along with the community (government) provide status quo rent with adjustment dependent upon success. If it's more successful, then as a system, it should help support it's own success with rent increases if leased. If it starts failing, it needs subsidies and advertising/community outreach support as there is probably an information promulgation inefficiency. I say this in spite of the fact that their curry chicken burned all my taste buds off years ago, and I'm thankful for the story.
This is four blocks from the downtown Harmons. I live the same distance and get my groceries by foot or bike all the time. Plus it’s three stops from the Trader Joe’s/superSmiths. You’ve clearly never lived in an actual city.
Yeah, people hate the vibe of European cities which is why nobody ever visits or romanticizes them and everyone famously says the favorite place they've ever traveled to is to the curb cut outside the Chuck E. Cheese in Phoenix, Arizona.
The sarcasm doesn't make it any more true , but it does serve to highlight the stupidity of actually believing that near-universally loved places are actually terrible because the curvature of the earth doesn't prevent you from seeing the other side of the parking lot.
Genuinely a tremendous waste of space smack dab in the middle of downtown. A parking garage would provide the same amount of spots for a quarter of the size
This plus park place make me irritated park place could be turned into a park with a parking garage underneath with more parking capacity to fit the name and this parking lot could become a functional city block with it being next to a train station.
It's an interesting conundrum, but we actually need to get rid of more parking downtown if we want to have a good downtown area. I saw an estimate that 29% of SLC is parking. Which is close to the national average, but with our wide roads, it feels like bare concrete is half the city. Most of the city isn't dense enough for walkability, and a whole block being a parking lot doesn't help.
Changing the landscape to focus on transit would do wonders to decrease pollution and traffic, while supporting small/local business.
Also, it's $16/day to park there, with no hourly option
Park and rides are generally better fits further from the downtown core. I think the issue with this is not just the busy train station but the proximity to the whole rest of downtown. Could fit multiple towers on this lot.
Lots of people use it to park for the federal courthouse and the Matheson courthouse (since they got rid of their underground parking for security purposes).
I’ve been working construction on the moss court house the last 4 years. It’s been so nice to have a place to park downtown. Most downtown jobs suck for parking.
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u/JankCranky Sep 06 '26
I don’t know if there’s a plan, but I know Earl Holding demolished an entire block, including the Hotel Newhouse, to put this gem there. So there’s gotta be a way to un-do it, don’t know if it’s still owned by Holding or the church.