Downtown rebound: LDS Church unveils plans for 20-acre development
Three years of planning are about to give way to five years of demolition and construction work: Several prominent downtown buildings will come down to make way for the 20-acre development The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is tentatively calling City Creek Center.
"Thank you for your patience," Presiding Bishop H. David Burton told the Salt Lake City Council on Tuesday. "We hope the wait will be worthwhile."
The plan will be an indoor-outdoor mix of retailers, residences and office space, with six acres of open space — gardens, fountains, pedestrian walkways and a mock City Creek running down the middle, roughly along what was once the actual stream's historic south arm.
The ZCMI Center and Crossroads Plaza malls will come down beginning in November, along with the Key Bank building and the Inn at Temple Square. Also slated for demolition: the historic First Security building, with its carved-stone lion heads peering down from the top, Corinthian columns lining the upper levels and Ionic columns nearer the street. The building is also home to peregrine-falcon perches.
Scheduled to make their debut are a full-service Harmon's grocery store, a new department store, as many as 766 residential units, one new office tower, a pedestrian bridge over Main Street, a host of retailers and a whole new look for the city blocks now dominated by the malls.
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The plan has gone through a number of incarnations, with city officials, including Mayor Rocky Anderson, sending the church back to the drawing board. Anderson was on vacation and not at Tuesday's meeting, but he has seen the plans, and his spokesman said the mayor is very happy with them.
Recent comments
The Church is practicing to build the New Jerusalem. Salt Lake is...
Anonymous | May 8, 2008 at 5:05 p.m.
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truehopeeternal | Jan. 8, 2008 at 8:38 a.m.
Greetings from San Francisco. Hats off to an ambitious project,...
J.R. | Aug. 19, 2007 at 12:11 a.m.
