The thing you have to understand about the new Lake Park Corporate Centre in West Valley City is that it's really big, by far the largest office park in Utah.
Its approximately 1,000 acres would accommodate New York City's Central Park (843 acres) and still have room left for a good-size chunk of downtown Salt Lake City.But it has little in common with downtown. Along with being among the largest office complexes in the Mountain West, it has the least commercial density.
That isn't by accident. In the first-phase development of 640 acres, only 265 of them are slated for construction. The remaining 375 will be open space, dedicated to the new 27-hole Johnny Miller-designed golf course - The Links at Lake Park - and open space, including wetlands that are home to a wide variety of migratory birds and other wildlife.
That works out to about 55 percent open space of which 25 percent is wetlands.
"We're really serious about protecting the environment here," said Mark Staples, director of the Land Group for Lake Park developer Zions Securities Corp., the real estate arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Brooks Carter, director of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, agrees, noting that Zions ". . .went beyond the usual token pond for ducks. They are trying to actually increase the preserve for shorebird habitat in the middle of a business district."
Formerly the home of the Kennecott Duck Club (you can watch the ducks and geese now, but you can't hunt them), the property encompasses an area from the Bangerter Highway on the east, 5600 South on the west, 2400 South on the north and 3000 South on the south.
The project was launched by Beneficial Development Co., which has since merged with Zions Securities. Construction began in 1995 and to this point, 112 of the first-phase 265 acres have been sold and the remainder are being looked at by several local and national developers.
Zions is limiting its role in the project to development of the land, including the golf course, waterways, drainage systems, roads, utilities, landscaping and other infrastructure - about a $40 million investment. It then sells building sites to other developers and/or tenants who construct their own buildings.
So far those tenants include Morgan Stanley Dean Witter (formerly Dean Witter Discover & Co.), which has a large operations center on 60 acres; and PacifiCorp, parent company of Utah Power, which has a facility on five acres. Intermountain Health Care is nearing completion of an office building on 28 acres in the park, but IHC's headquarters will remain downtown.
William K. Martin, president of Consolidated Realty Group in Salt Lake City, says Lake Park is a wonderful addition to the business community in an area that required considerable foresight to envision it as a top-end business park.
Martin says it will anchor that area of the county with the kind of quality that the Salt Lake International Center brought to the northwest quadrant in the mid-1970s.
"This development is going to be a big benefit to the whole valley, not just West Valley City," said Martin. "The business demographics are shifting more to the west and south of Salt Lake City, and this gives the area a solid base. It's a fabulous office park, and there are few developers with the staying power of Zions Securities to develop this property. It may take 15 years to fill up, but it's going to be first class."
That jibes with Staples' estimate of 12 to 15 years to full development.
"We're in no hurry; we're long-term players," said Staples, but he noted that the project is two years ahead of its original dev-el-op-ment schedule.
At full build-out, and depending on the types of companies that decide to locate in the park, Staples projects the complex will contain 5 million to 9 million square feet of commercial space in 10-20 buildings employing 12,000 to 15,000 people.
Visitors to the park are most impressed with the extent of the landscaping Zions has planted in an area that had formerly been home to only weeds, sage-brush and bare, alkaline soil. Staples acquired the stock of an entire plant nursery to landscape the project, which includes 4,700 trees of 4 inches or larger.
Some 400,000 cubic yards of earth from the excavation for the LDS Church's new Assembly Hall, being constructed north of Temple Square, has been trucked to Lake Park to be used as fill material at the site.
Landscaped berms have been built around the perimeters of parking lots to shield them from the streets. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's facility has 4,200 parking spaces, but they can't be seen from much of the interior road system.
Native plants and grasses are being planted in the marshes and other natural areas - the developers have actually expanded the wetlands on the property - and, of course, the golf course, owned by Evergreen Alliance Golf, based in Dallas, provides vast areas of green grass. Eighteen of the 27 holes are scheduled to open to the public April 15.
There will eventually be four major entrances to Lake Park: The main entrance now is at 2700 S. Bangerter Highway. Other entries will be at 2400 South, 4800 West and, eventually, 5600 West, where it will tie into the proposed Legacy Highway.