SALT LAKE CITY — Tom Welch has an idea about what we should do with the prison property once the prison gets moved.
Yes, that Tom Welch. The man who spent a decade leading the bid that brought the 2002 Olympics to Salt Lake City, the man who was eventually replaced as Olympic organizing chief by Mitt Romney, the man who was indicted by federal prosecutors for allegedly lavishing too many gifts on Olympic voters, and the man who saw a judge throw the case out of federal court on the grounds that it was groundless.
To make an old long story short.
The irony of the case against him was that he was accused of criminal intent without anyone ever being able to point out what he stood to gain by being a criminal. At no time was Tom Welch accused of seeking personal material advantage. He owned no property, no development, no business that stood to profit because of the Olympics. If he had been convicted, they’d have laughed him out of the cellblock.
What are you in for?
Bringing the Olympics to Utah.
In the end, the only thing he was guilty of was the same thing he was guilty of in the beginning: being an unabashed, unashamed — and OK, sometimes a tad overzealous — booster for the place where he was born and raised.
Tom Welch is one of those incurable romantics, a visionary, probably born a couple of decades too late, the kind of person who sees possibilities and potential, who is always looking down the road.
I know this because we’re neighbors. Our houses are only about a half-mile apart, close enough that occasionally we’ll get together to solve the world’s problems.
Which is how the subject of the prison came up.
“You know,” said Tom one day over lunch, “we’ve been fortunate in this state and this (Salt Lake) valley to always have far-sighted people to see what’s possible and then make it happen. In sports we’ve had people like the Millers, and Spence Eccles, who were there to save our basketball team. When it came to the Olympics there were Jack Gallivan and Norm Bangerter and Ted Wilson, among others, who had the ability to look beyond their time and dream dreams of what could be done that would help make Salt Lake City a major metropolitan area and show the world what was possible here.”
I could tell he was warming up.
“Now,” he said, “we have an opportunity to look forward 10, 20 years down the road and decide where we want to be and what we want to look like. What are the additional kinds of alternatives in culture and entertainment that we want to offer? What do we want to add to our community that will continue to position us as a well-rounded, balanced, major metropolitan area?
“What does that say to me? Well, when I think of Seattle I think about their football team. When I think about Denver, I think about the Broncos. When I think about Phoenix, it’s the Cardinals. And I think about their baseball teams. These are the major cities we compete against in attracting new businesses to Utah. They all have professional football and baseball. We don’t. And, you know, we ought to be looking for major league football and baseball to be a part of our future.”
He sees the prison property, once the prison is gone, as the perfect place for the NFL and MLB.
“There’s this great debate going on right now about where to move the prison, because the move is a given. Maybe an even more significant debate is what’s going to happen with the existing prison ground. Because here is 80-plus acres that is centered right on the major north-south arterial road, right between the two major communities on the Wasatch Front, a crown jewel of ground, and it belongs to the people.
“We need to stop and ask what is the highest and best use of that ground? Is it for more housing, more shopping centers? Is that what we ought to be doing with the crown jewel in our valley? Or should we be discussing a vision in a broader sense? If I were a city planner or someone like the governor or the mayors, I would be looking and asking what are we going to want in the future? And I believe the highest and best use of that property, or a portion of that property, is to make it a center for professional sports.
“You could have the football stadium right next to the baseball stadium. They would share the venue and facilities, and light transit would run right through it. And there would still be plenty of room for development all around the periphery. I mean it’s an ideal situation that could be squandered by selling it off to the highest (bidding) developer. That land belongs to the people and the people should keep it.”
That’s Tom Welch’s latest lobby. He’s gone on record that he wants to go to prison, once it stops being one.
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays.
Email: benson@deseretnews.com