PROVO — Under heavy security, nine banks of safe-deposit boxes were hauled Friday from the old Zions Bank building on 100 N. Freedom Boulevard into the new Zions Bank Financial Center on University Avenue and 200 North.
"We have a team of professionals plan these moves," said Kelly Ward, area president and manager of the Provo region branch of Zions Bank. "We've done this before, so we know the procedure."
When the new bank building opens for business at 9 a.m. March 29, it will mark a major step in a $100 million-plus face-lift for downtown Provo that will include a $45 million county convention center and a $30 million expansion of Nu Skin's corporate headquarters.
City officials hope the mix of public and private building projects will jump start the economic recovery of the city's historical downtown.
"The reason we did what we did here was to be a catalyst for the resurgence of downtown," Ward said.
The bank's customer-service operations will occupy part of the first floor of the 130,000 square foot building. The third and fourth floors of the eight-story building will be office space for the Provo region, which extends from Lehi to Richfield and from Delta to Roosevelt.
All told, Zions will occupy about 30 percent of the building, bringing 66 employees from various offices in Utah County to a single location.
"We've waited for this for a long time," Ward said. "This is the culmination of nine years of work."
Aaron Cook with NAI Utah, the leasing agent for the financial center, said leases are being negotiated for retail businesses on the ground floor, as well as the fifth and eighth floors.
Work on the building started in 2008, before the economic downturn stalled similar projects like University Tower, a mixed-use project consisting of a 10-story office tower and two four-story towers on the historical Knight Block, two blocks to the south. That project is still on hold.
"Zions has had a very, very optimistic outlook on the future," Ward said, noting that the company didn't slow down the building despite a darkening economic climate. "This has always been the right move for us and the presence we wanted to have in the Utah County area."
Projects on the horizon signal a renewed interest in investing in downtown Provo. In addition to the convention center and Nu Skin expansion, the block that housed the old Zions Bank building at 200 W. 100 North is slated for a parking structure, which Provo City has agreed to build for the conference center and a proposed hotel.
Dixon Holmes, who was recently named Provo's deputy mayor of economic development, said interest in developing Provo's downtown is exciting.
"It is a true downtown. We are very please with where it is, and we have big plans for where its going," Holmes said. "It's ebbed and flowed over time,"
Holmes' position is a new one, created when Mayor John Curtis transformed the department of economic development into the mayor's office of economic development and made Holmes his first deputy mayor for the office.
"I wanted to make it clear that economic development is one of my first priorities," Curtis said when he created the office.
Holmes knows he has a tough job ahead of him.
"The expectation is high to make things happen in Provo," Holmes said. "The mayor knows, and I know, that we are not going to end the local challenges in the economy, but there are things we can do. The convention center can help. And Zions made a bold move with their new building."
The convention center, which is scheduled to open in 2012, will occupy half a block between Center Street and 100 West, and 200 North and 300 North. Just making way for the project has put money into the local economy.
The center will take out two nonprofit businesses, the Food and Care Coalition, which has already moved to a new $11 million building in Provo's East Bay Business Center, and Mountainlands Community Health, which will move soon into the old county health building after a $3.1 million remodeling.
One of the first convention customers the county hopes to lure will be Nu Skin Enterprises, the $1-billion-a-year direct-sales company that sells cosmetics and nutritional supplements all over the world. Nu Skin's 10-tower glass corporate headquarters dominates the Provo downtown landscape, but the company holds its annual convention in Salt Lake City.
Nu Skin added momentum to Provo's downtown resurgence when it announced plans earlier this year to add a 120,000-square-foot, six story office building across the street from its headquarters.
The plans include taking over a block of 100 West, closing it to traffic and joining the existing and new building with an atrium that would serve as "privately owned public space" for concerts and public gatherings. Provo has agreed to vacate the street and is now waiting for a design proposal before moving ahead.
"That building is a good thing for the overall community," Holmes said. "It will bring people into downtown."
Some 400 people, in fact. Nu Skin, like Zions Bank, plans to move workers from other buildings throughout Utah County into its new offices.
"These people will have to get something to eat. They may stay downtown to go to a performance at the Covey Center or to go to dinner," Holmes said, adding that Provo already has a more lively nightlife than some might think.
"If you come down here on weekends or evenings, you'll see that most of the parking stalls on Center Street are taken by people going to restaurants, The Loft or Comedy Sportz. We even have a couple of drinking establishments," Holmes said. "Our downtown continues to go through transition. I think it's just getting better."
e-mail: mhaddock@desnews.com