Nice, but kind of boring. That was how a team of outside architects and planners summed up downtown Salt Lake City three years ago.
"Weak," "stagnant," "drained of tenants, shoppers and life," was precisely what the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team said in the summer of 1988 after it blitzed into town, put on its urban stethoscope and took the city's pulse.When the dust settled (figuratively, of course, because our streets are too clean for anything that messy, the R/UDAT visitors pointed out), the experts left behind a 66-page report, "Our Future By Design," that prescribed a tonic of design, zoning and planning changes to give the city renewed vitality.
So, three years later, how are we doing?
San Francisco architect Chuck Davis, who led the eight-member R/UDAT team, will be in Salt Lake City next week to make his own assessment. Your comments are also needed (see the response form on this page), says Stephen Goldsmith, a member of the R/UDAT urban design committee - one of four local volunteer committees formed three years ago to debate and implement the original R/UDAT proposals.
Meanwhile, the Deseret News talked to local planning experts to rate the city's progress:
STREET LIFE: You need more people on the street, said R/UDAT, and it wasn't referring to road crews. Salt Lakers tend to retreat to the ZCMI or Crossroads malls, or to the suburbs, leaving the city's wide streets nearly vacant.
But there are new signs of life downtown. A city ordinance, passed in March, now allows street vendors to sell food, balloons and flowers from carts throughout the business district. Another ordinance allows sidewalk cafes.
In addition, the Salt Lake Arts Council has exConstruction on Block 57 will include a public plaza with an
amphitheater, ice rink, restaurants and children's park.
panded its Brown Bag and Twilight concert series, which have added new beats to the heart of the city. The council also moved its Living Traditions Festival downtown. There is also talk about reviving a Farmers' Market, maybe in Pioneer Park.
And, coming in 1993, the city's Block 57 - that urban-planning war zone bounded by 200 and 300 South, Main and State streets - will feature a public plaza with amphitheater, ice rink, restaurants and children's park.
Also possibly in the offing: a plan to connect City Creek to downtown. City officials are negotiating a trade with the LDS Church, exchanging property at the north end of Main Street for two parking lots near Second Avenue and State Street.
The ambitious plan, first proposed in the 1960s and given a kick-start by the R/UDAT visit, would extend the city's best asset - the proximity of its canyons - right into the heart of downtown.
"The downtowns that are really great are people-friendly," notes city planner Doug Dansie. "I think we're heading in that direction."
COMMITMENT TO DOWNTOWN: You can't have a lively downtown if businesses relocate to the surburbs, or even if all the prime downtown businesses huddle together at the north end of Main Street, said R/UDAT.
The city's decision to locate the new Jazz arena across from Triad on 300 West will bring people downtown and will strengthen the city's west side.
The city has also adopted an east downtown master plan for the area between 200 and 700 East, South Temple to 400 South, just east of the central business district. The plan calls for an emphasis on residential development there and encourages commerical development to be centered in the downtown core.
A new Performing Arts Coalition is looking at a downtown location for a proposed theater complex, and local scientists and civic leaders are exploring the possibility of a science museum downtown.
Two years ago, downtown business owners formed the Downtown Alliance to lobby on their behalf. The alliance is bidding for a contract to carry out CBD improvements, marketing, economic development and business retention.
PLANNING AND ZONING - It's so old it ought to be in the Smithsonian, R/UDAT members said of the city's 64-year-old zoning document. Now Salt Lake City is in the midst of a zoning rewrite and a downtown master plan update.
Several R/UDAT concepts are being integrated into the master plan, including the notion of solidifying Main Street as a shopping corridor by requiring retail businesses on the ground level of multistory buildings. The plan also pushes for a strong "southern anchor" at 500 South, possibly a courts complex. Some sort of architectural design review will also be considered.
A draft of the master plan should be ready for public hearings this fall.
PARKING - R/UDAT called for a comprehensive parking management plan. While that hasn't happened, some gains have been made. Surface parking lots are now a zoning "conditional use," which means that developers must follow certain guidelines, including landscaping improvements.
On the heels of a survey showing that the city's parking problem is more imagined than real - there are plenty of spaces if you know where to look - the new zoning laws may revamp parking standards requiring minimum parking spaces for businesses, with an emphasis on short-term parking and after-hours use. That would mean more city space left over for humans rather than cars.
CITIZEN PARTICIPATION - Growing but still inadequate, said R/UDAT about the involvement of people in the planning and decision-making process. Since then, however, a citizen advisory board has been added to the city's Redevelopment Agency and there is talk of more architectural design competitions, like the one funded by the RDA and Gastromony for the pedestrian walkway between 200 South and Pierpont Avenue.
"It's a way to spark public interest," explains Robert Bliss, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Utah. "Without (a competition) you get the quiet appointment of an architect, and then three years later you get a big surprise."
The R/UDAT committees themselves have brought together a cross-section of 200 private citizens, civic, business and church leaders, who have tried to come to consensus about what Salt Lake City needs to keep it alive and well.
"Salt Lake has potential like no other city," says Goldsmith. "What R/UDAT did was help us visualze the kind of downtown we're capable of."- The public is invited to participate in a "Speaker's Corner" on urban issues, at noon Wednesday, July 17, at the north end of the City-County Building on Washington Square. Speakers are invited to speak about urban design, zoning, economic development and "any of the subtle things about how you want the city to be," says R/UDAT member Qita Wooley.