In the beginning there were no conventions of the Intravenous Nurses Society, no meetings of the Refrigeration Service Engineers, not even a Bridal Showcase.
So when Salt Lakers decided to build a Salt Palace a century ago, they had different priorities. They didn't need meeting rooms and banquet facilities. They wanted a building with minarets. They wanted a midway where Bosco the Snake Eater and Coco the Wild Girl could draw a crowd. They wanted an eight-lap bicycle track.And they wanted salt.
So they sent some men to Salina to bring back slabs of rock salt. And they took lumber out to the Great Salt Lake and set it in the brine and waited for it to get crusty. And after they had installed all the slabs and the crystalized wall panels, they sprayed the ceilings with even more salt.
It was ornate and spacious and sparkly, and for 11 glorious years it drew Utahns to poplar-lined lawns on 900 South, between Main and State streets.
And then one windy day in August 1910, a fire broke out and spread, and by the next morning the tin roof had fallen in with a roar. There was no insurance. And that was that.
And now here we are again, at the turn of another century, ready to formally dedicate another Salt Palace.
It's our third palace. The second one was demolished two years ago, after just 25 years as a convention center. Success was the culprit the second time around. We marketed ourselves so well that everybody wanted to come to Salt Lake City to meet: anesthesiologists and athletic trainers, bowlers and florists, urologists and underwriters.
Suddenly the convention center of the future - the one touted in 1969 as "a lasting design," one that "won't be `dated' easily" - no longer was modern enough after all.
There wasn't enough exhibit space. The meeting rooms were too small. The sports arena didn't have enough seats. And besides, the place just looked too . . . boring.
"This place smells like my high school," someone once told Beth White. It was the cinderblock walls and the linoleum floors and the orange plastic doors, she says.
"The old Salt Palace was functional. But there's a demand now for hotel quality in your meeting services," says White, the Salt Palace's enthusiastic director of marketing and event management.
The new Salt Palace will have six times more usable exhibit space (making it the 10th largest in the West). The ballroom will be the third largest located in a convention center in the West, with seating for 2,500. There will be 51 meeting rooms (at 54,000 square feet, the seventh largest in the West).
What White likes about the new center is that it's more "friendly." Because you can see the front door, meeting rooms, ballroom and exhibit halls all from one central location, everything seems accessible. So even a tired Air and Waste Management Association member from Des Moines, the one whose feet already hurt, won't feel overwhelmed.
White also likes the airiness of the new palace: the loftiness of the open ceiling design, the way so much natural light shines in to the hallways.
She even likes the carpet, although that may put her in the minority. Part of the carpet is a series of diagonally striped blues and greens, placed in cockeyed segments. The other carpet is a cottonwood seed motif in what White describes as "bold" colors. It is, perhaps not surprisingly, a one-of-a-kind design, made especially for the Salt Palace.
"What I tell people is that I wouldn't put it in my living room," says White. "But then my living room isn't 475 feet long with a 75-foot ceiling."
One of the new building's most distinctive features is a 120-foot tower at the front door on West Temple at 100 South. Already the comparisons to recognizable objects are filtering in. White has heard the Salt Shaker, the Hair Curler, the Coke Can and, her personal favorite, the Solid Rocket Booster.
White thinks Utahns and conventiongoers will be thankful for the tower when they want to give directions to a friend to meet them at the Salt Palace. And at night the tower will be lighted. It will be a beacon, says White.
The Salt Palace may have its critics (see our art critic's opinion beginning on C1), but White knows how hard it is to make a place both functional and elegant.
The new center "has all the bells and whistles" that people expect these days when they come to a convention center, she says. Exhibitors will be able to hook up to the Internet as easily as getting a phone line. There is "state of the art" audio-visual capability. The toilets flush automatically.
`The joke two years ago was `If you build it, will they come?' " says White. But the new, improved Salt Palace has already proved not to be just a "Field of Dreams" convention center, she says.
"I don't think anyone truly believed we'd have the volume of bookings we have," says White. Years 1997 and 1998 are already "pretty close" to being booked up. A few events - conventions of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, for example - are already booked for 2001 and 2002.
And if the palace proves to be too small by then, there's a provision for that, too. The place is designed with a 10- and 20-year extension plan, White explains. The south wall of the ballroom has been built with brick and mortar instead of steel so that it can easily be torn down and added on to without much disruption.
Maybe this will be our third and final Salt Palace, the one that lasts until the next turn of the century and beyond.
*****
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- The first Salt Palace, dedicated on Aug. 21, 1899, cost $60,000.
- The second Salt Palace, dedicated on July 11, 1969, cost $17 million.
- The third Salt Palace, dedicated on May 16, 1996, cost $85 million.
- The first Salt Palace consisted of 16 panels that bore the names of all the states west of the Mississippi; a plaster Statue of Liberty; interior panels encrusted with salt; and 14 minarets with fancy buttresses.
- The second Salt Palace used 1.5 million bricks and 450,000 concrete blocks.
- The third Salt Palace contains 6,000 tons of steel, 30,000 cubic yards of concrete, 300,000 linear feet of electrical wire, 15,000 gallons of paint. It was designed by the Atlanta architecture firm Thompson, Ventulett, Stainbeck and Associates.
*****
Dedication
There were two sets of accordionists on hand at the grand opening of the Salt Palace in July 1969. This time around there will be lasers, ska, magic and "the largest flag in captivity," according to Salt Palace marketing director Beth White.
Nearly all of the grand opening's four days of events are free to the public.
Formal dedication begins Thursday with a "royal processional," with a horse-drawn carriage, from the City-County Building to the Salt Palace tower. Anyone can join in the processional.
Then come some speeches, a ribbon-cutting and the raising of a flag as big as a football field. The flag, 350 feet by 150 feet, is owned by Sky's the Limit Productions of Salt Lake City.
This will be the flag's fourth public appearance, following unfurlings at the Liberty Bowl, Gator Bowl and Atlanta Braves' opening day this spring.
Three 50-ton cranes will raise the flag, which will unfurl to a Mormon Tabernacle rendition of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" - but only if there isn't a strong wind, says Sky's the Limit Vice President Doug Green.
From noon to 7:30 p.m., and then again on Friday, May 17, the public is invited into the Salt Palace to view over 50 "Utah's Finest" exhibits, including a musketeer from the Utah Shakespeare Festival, a racing car from the Utah Salt Flats Racing Association, a 30-foot teepee from Mountain Man Rendezvous, chamber music, science demonstrations, cowboy poets, face painting and more.
Friday's events will also include a nine-hour "block party" featuring rock bands, the Calvary Baptist Church Choir, drill teams and dance clubs and culminating with a performance of Rockapella, the "house band" from TV's "Where in the World Is Carmen San Diego?" The block party will be held on the South Plaza.
Saturday's big draw is a comedy and magic show featuring the juggling Raspyni Brothers and magician Brett Daniels. Only about 1,500 tickets are being sold for the show, at $18.50 each.
Following Thursday, Friday and Saturday's events there will be a free laser, illumination and fireworks show at the tower, presented by Oasis Stage Werks and Lantis.
"This is no discotheque," says project manager Tim Burke from Oasis. This is "dramatic architectural lighting" like the Riddler's lair in "Batman Forever." "Salt Lake has never seen anything like this before."