The Jazz haven't even played a regular season game there yet, but already the impact of the new Delta Center is being felt on Salt Lake City.
Already, says Alice Steiner, director of the city's Redevelopment Agency, "there's a real sense of activity" in the arena's west-side neighborhood, where just a month before, few people could be found after dark.
Since most of those people need to park their cars, the next change for the area, says Steiner, will be a proliferation of new parking lots. "Then, slowly, you'll start to see some restaurants come in." The Triad Center, located across the street from the arena, will probably be the first beneficiary, she says.The near west side, already seeing activity with the success of restaurants and galleries on Pierpont Avenue, will continue to expand, Steiner predicts.
How all this will affect Salt Lake's traditional downtown, now that major sports and concert events have moved to the Delta Center, remains to be seen. Already 16 downtown restaurants have teamed up to provide the DART - Downtown Area Restaurants Trolley - for patrons who want to attend events at the arena. The impact of new development on Block 57 - bordered by 200 and 300 South, Main and State streets - won't be felt until the three-acre plaza is completed in the spring of 1993. When it is, though, "it could be a major cornerstone" for downtown vitality, says John Schumann, chairman of the Downtown Alliance. Instead of moving primarily between the downtown's two indoor malls, the hope is that people will be drawn down Main Street to 200 South and beyond, an area that has become a virtual people-free zone in the past few years.
A courts complex proposed on 500 South would pull pedestrians even farther south, notes Schumann, and would be a springboard for additional retail support services in the area.
Downtown Salt Lake's other major project currently under construction - the Broadway Centre office tower and cinema complex on 300 South and State - may have an adverse impact on downtown office vacancy rates, says Schumann. When the Broadway Centre is completed, he says, the vacancy rate will be 25 percent.
By and large, he says, "we aren't seeing new tenants moving in, we're seeing a shift in tenants already here." The buildings that suffer first are the older ones, he says. But the low rents that accompany high vacancy rates may begin to draw tenants from the suburbs, he says.