Crews are paving over green space at This Is the Place Heritage Park to create a new 215-stall parking lot to accommodate visitors at the annual Christkindlmarkt, and some Salt Lake City residents are not pleased with the development.
The Utah Division of Facilities and Construction Management had already been planning to expand the lot to decrease visitors parking in nearby neighborhoods during the four-day holiday event at the state park, division director Jim Russell said.
But the division decided to start work early when they got an offer from crews building the new Utah Mental Health Translational Research Building, behind the nearby Huntsman Mental Health Institute, Russell said. Those contractors will rent out the lot once it’s complete and use it during work days while they finish construction.
The lot will cost about $590,000, and renting out parking will take care of about $175,000 to $200,000 of that cost, Russell said.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The lot will take up approximately 70,000 square feet, or 1.6 acres, and crews have already begun tearing up grass and moving dirt to ready it for construction. It will be done in time for this year’s market, which runs from Nov. 29 through Dec. 2.
“It’s kind of a win-win deal,” Russell said. “I know there’s a few neighbors who have been calling everybody. I’ve heard from them all.”
Those residents have decried the move, saying that preserving Salt Lake City’s dwindling open space should be the priority, and that paving over the area will impact plants and animals, as well as potentially make the area hotter because of the urban heat island effect.
“This deal seems great ON PAPER ONLY,” one resident wrote on Nextdoor.
Another wrote, “We need open spaces. Soon our young children and grandchildren won’t know what dirt looks like, just parking lots.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Construction equipment is parked throughout a dirt area, formerly an open green space, where now a new parking lot is being constructed for This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.
Russell said the “mountainside and all the shrubbery and trees” on the other side of the park will remain, and that officials chose a “nice, flat area” next to an existing lot for construction.
A social media post also claimed that crews had ignored a stop-work order from Salt Lake City. Russell said that isn’t true and no such order had been issued.
Russell added that he’s spoken with legislators who say one of area constituents’ “biggest complaints” is people parking in their yards and neighborhoods during the Christkindlmarkt. The new lot will allow the state park to host other events throughout the year, he said.
This Is the Place Heritage Park did not respond to The Salt Lake Tribune’s requests for comment.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A deer stands in the brush next to a dirt area, formerly an open green space, where now a new parking lot is being constructed for This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Construction equipment is parked throughout a dirt area, formerly an open green space, where now a new parking lot is being constructed for This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023.
