Utah says it could easily host another Winter Games — but Salt Lake City has no Olympic park and its iconic arch is in pieces

Here we go again — state officials are set to make another bid for the Winter Games, intoning Salt Lake City’s Olympic legacy — but unlike other former hosts, from Torino to Vancouver to Sochi, Utah’s capital has no Olympic legacy park.

It is true that Park City has the Utah Olympic Park with ski jumps and bobsled runs. And Kearns has the Utah Olympic Oval, where speedskaters train. But in the 2002 host city, there are few tangible symbols of its historic Winter Games.

Perhaps the most recognizable icon of the 2002 Winter Games was the awe-inspiring Hoberman Arch. It now sits in a hundred pieces in a warehouse, gathering dust awaiting the fulfillment of promises made by former Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker and current Mayor Jackie Biskupski to find a special place for it.

When assembled, the phenomenal, 31,000-pound aluminum web is 36 feet high and 72 feet wide. It opens and closes like the iris of an eye and unfolds from two dimensions to three. Stationed at the Medals Plaza near North Temple and 300 West in February 2002, it was the colorful backdrop for awards ceremonies and concerts seen around the world.

Salt Lake City Councilman Charlie Luke laments the missed opportunity.

“We needed an Olympic Park before the [2002] Olympics and we needed one after the Olympics,” he said. “It’s one of the biggest errors the city and state made. They really messed up.”

There was an ill-fated attempt to create an Olympic legacy park in 2003. When it fell apart, the Hoberman Arch was moved to Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah. It was torn down in August 2014.

The Olympic cauldron remains at the stadium, which was the site of the Opening and Closing ceremonies. A small building there housed other Olympic memorabilia. Those items were moved to Park City in 2014.

Luke said he’s disappointed that neither Becker nor Biskupski moved forward with a solution to rebuild the arch in a setting that would allow Utahns and visitors to drink in the memories of the 2002 Games.

“One of the things I encountered a couple of years ago was there was no support from the executive branch,” Luke said. “There was a hope with a new administration that would change. But it hasn’t happened.”

Rocky Anderson, who presided as mayor over the 2002 Winter Games, has said that what happened to the Hoberman Arch and lack of a park represented an “incredible betrayal of our community’s interest in having an Olympic legacy.”

The best way forward at this point, he explained recently, is to take the issue out of the hands of politicians and appoint a grass-roots committee to find a home for the arch at an Olympic legacy park.

“There are a lot of people in the community who care [about a legacy park],” Anderson said. “It can still be done and it wouldn’t cost that much money in the larger scheme of things.”

Shortly after the 2002 Games, Anderson’s staff drew up plans for an Olympic-themed space at Pioneer Park that would include icons, memorabilia and a winter ice rink, along with the Hoberman Arch and the Olympic cauldron. It would act as a community gathering place, he said.

That plan, however, was shot down by the City Council, which favored Gallivan Plaza as the future home of the arch and the cauldron.

But the Gallivan location proved problematic because, according to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Olympic symbols cannot be displayed where non-Olympic sponsors — such as Pepsi or Budweiser — host events. Still, the council believed it could create a giant cover for the arch to hide the Olympic icon when sponsored events came to the plaza.

Beyond that far-fetched fix, Anderson said, is that Galavan already is overcrowded with buildings and other accoutrements.

The Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC) had offered some $8 million for funding a park in 2003, Fraser Bullock, chief operating officer, said in a 2015 interview. But with Anderson and the council at loggerheads, Bullock and SLOC withdrew.

The arch was reeled back to its minimum, two-dimensional size and, in 2003, in a stopgap measure, was moved to the south end of Rice-Eccles Stadium, where it sat without space to expand to its full magnitude.

And there it sat until 2014, when the U. informed the Becker administration that it was expanding Rice-Eccles and needed the space Hoberman occupied. The school had agreed to hold it only until 2009. Although U. officials had notified the city in April 2014 of the impending move, Becker’s administration said it was blindsided by the August 2014 public announcement that it had to go.

In mid-August 2014, at a cost of $116,000, the arch was unceremoniously disassembled, trucked from Rice-Eccles and dumped in pieces at a Salt Lake City impound lot at 2150 W. 500 South.

Upon hearing what had happened to his creation, designer Chuck Hoberman was taken aback.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Hoberman said in a November 2014 telephone interview from his New York City office.

The arch seemed to be a part of Salt Lake City, and he had hoped it would be a continuing Olympic legacy.

“It brought a warm feeling to the community,” he said. “I hope we can find a home for it.”

A month later, in early December, at least 29 pieces of the aluminum arch were stolen from the impound lot, apparently for their value as scrap. The culprits were never found.

The remaining pieces were then moved to a warehouse at an undisclosed location. Although officials from both the Becker and Biskupski administrations said the stolen parts would be replaced, that has yet to happen.

But City Hall spokesman Matthew Rojas insisted last week that with a bid for a future Winter Games on the minds of many Utahns, Biskupski’s administration is again hot on the hunt for a location to rebuild the creation.

“We are very much thinking about the Hoberman Arch,” he said. “But I don’t know if there is a clear time frame.”

Until such time, the broken bones of the Hoberman Arch will remain hidden away in a musty warehouse somewhere awaiting resurrection along with Salt Lake City’s Olympic legacy.