A Look at... Salt Lake City

[dsjeffries]

quote:Originally posted by Viperlord

Yeah, I saw your pics of the BOK center on flickr. I was searching for "downtown salt lake" on flickr and saw your City Creek Center pic, so I followed it back to your other pics. kinda funny.

Just out of curiosity, did you know about the BOk Center before you saw the photos?  If so, how?? [^]

quote:SLC has been studying a ton of cities as models. Thats where are whole Downtownrising vision came from. Two of the biggest cities that SLC has looked at when it comes to development and planning are Portland and San Diego.

I hadn't even thought of San Diego... Portland, though, I think should serve as a model for the rest of the country.

quote:Another thing that is going to help is commuter rail and light rail extensions. There will be two parts of the commuter rail. The north section of 30+ miles is scheduled to open this year. This commuter rail will drop people off at an intermodal hub in DT SLC. At the hub people will have access to other light rail lines, buses, taxis, greyhound bus service,etc.

Right now, we are expanding our light rail lines in the downtown area, plus out to some other parts of the valley. Also light rail to the cities airport is in the plans as well.

There is also a street car (trolley) line that is being planned in the next five years to link a $500 million dollar mixed use project in South Salt Lake to the old sugarhouse district, which is becoming quite a hot spot of activtiy.

The salt lake valley is seeing a ton of mixed use developments taking place along the lightrail lines.

I'm guessing the North commuter rail you mentioned will go through Bountiful and end in Ogden?  How is it being financed?  Have you found it to be that the commuter rail will follow where the higher population density is, or that the rail itself will attract higher density around it?  It might be easier for me to just search for the studies than for you to post allllll of those details--is it available online?

quote:Salt Lake has been losing a lot to the suburbs in the past while. Downtown lost a 20,000 seat soccer stadium, a 13,000 seat hockey arena, and many more office developments to the burbs. This is bad planning in my head. A centralized location for entertainment and sports hubs should be downtown.

Right now, Tulsa is in what has turned out to be an epic struggle with one of our small suburbs.  The Tulsa Drillers is our hometown, minor-league baseball team, and developers of a huge riverfront development in Jenks (across the Arkansas River from Tulsa) have tried to lure the Drillers away from Tulsa.  Tulsa's officials then scrambled to get the Drillers to stay, and are now figuring out how to build a stadium downtown to keep the Drillers in Tulsa.  Anything like that happen in SLC?

[cannon_fodder]

Thanks for the info ViperLord.  

IMHO, SLC is an example of a city that has few material advantages (no port, no oil/timber or many other natural res.) and is rather inconveniently located.  I know it has wonderful hiking and skiing, but many places in the West do.

But in spite of that it has risen to be a preeminent American city.  Sure the Church has had a strong hand in it, but there are as many devoted Baptists in Tulsa as there are LDS in SLC, so discounting their achievements in that manner really doesn't work.   To me, the difference is the citizens of Salt Lake take their community to heart, embrace what they have to work with, and make it the best they can - same with Portland, Albuquerque, et. al.  

While SLC has created a business friendly environment to leverage jobs for its educated workforce, Oklahoma has fostered a difficult business environment (Workers Comp, HB1802, etc.) and neglected education.  Tulsa in the last 30 years seems to think small, resist change, and it's citizens appear resigned to a second or third tier status.  Again, it's painful to see cities with (sorry but...) less to work with than Tulsa outperforming us.  We started the race with a HUGE lead thanks to the oil boom in the 1920's but now...

I really need some good Tulsa news soon.