An updated rendering of the Delta Center parking garage with added landscaping elements. Image via CAA ICON and Walter P Moore and Associates
The controversial plan to build a seven-story, $23 million parking garage on the southwest corner of the Delta Center has officially earned a green light from the Salt Lake City Council.
The council voted 6-0 Tuesday evening to approve a zoning map amendment that includes a master development agreement for the Delta Center’s parking garage, which would include 448 parking stalls total. Council Member Eva López Chávez, who represents Downtown, was unable to cast a vote Tuesday, as she was attending the meeting remotely before experiencing technical difficulties.
Council Chair Chris Wharton said that although López Chávez was trying to text Council Member Victoria Petro about her nay vote, the ordinance was still approved.
“(The ordinance) passes unanimously with Council Member López Chávez not present, although I think we all acknowledge that Council Member López Chávez was likely a no vote on this,” Wharton said during the meeting.
Earlier in the day, city planning staff outlined a handful of changes made by the Smith Entertainment Group (SEG), which owns both the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth, in the Delta Center’s updated plans. The changes were made based on feedback from the council during a work session meeting last week.
Nick Tarbet, the city council’s Deputy Director of Legislative & Policy, outlined SEG’s changes to the council. He said SEG added three bike racks to their parking plans, with two on the north side of the block and a third on the south. Each rack would hold up to 15 bicycles.
More notably, SEG made changes to the parking structure’s exterior. Tarbet said SEG, “is committed to designing and planting landscaping such as trees, shrubs and brushes along the 400 West and 100 South streets.” Though he said the renderings available aren’t exact, the landscaping is an addition to previous plans. Both the Salt Lake City Planning Commission and the City Council had previously lamented the lack of visual interest elements in plans.
Tarbet said SEG had also committed $75,000 to “visually activate” the parking garage frontages on 400 West and 100 South with public art. Tarbet added, “One provision in there is, (the visual activation) would be in consultation with city planning staff and the (Salt Lake City) Arts Council, and the funding for the art would not come from the public benefit ticket fee that was agreed to in the participation agreement the city and SEG signed.”
The last provision added Tuesday was to ensure SEG complies with their development agreement with the city, as the provision states, “Failure to comply with the development agreement would result in daily fines.” The daily fines would range from $100 per day to $400 per day, depending on the year in which the fines would occur, according to the agreement.
Council Member Dan Dugan, who pushed last week for the addition of bicycle parking onsite, thanked SEG for adding the bike parking and for their willingness to make changes on the fly.
Petro said during Tuesday’s work session that she appreciated the addition of the landscaping and art elements. She said the southwest corner of the arena has been a wind tunnel in the past, and any additions would be helpful for that corner.
“I still have concerns over making sure that we’re taking a regionalized view of where we’re putting cars versus we’re putting people versus where we’re putting bikes,” Petro said. “I still would like to see those things be enhanced as we move further, but I actually think us using these artistic and green elements to almost disguise a back of house really does make this cutting edge, and makes our investment in our Delta Center for this purpose a really wise investment at this point.”
Development Details
- Owner – Smith Entertainment Group
- Construction Manager – CAA ICON
- Architect and Structural Engineer – Walter P. Moore and Associates
- Civil and Landscape Engineer – Horrocks
- Electrical and Low Voltage Engineer – BNA Consulting
- Mechanical, Plumbing and Fire Engineer – VBFA
- Traffic Engineering – Hales Engineering
