Salt Lake City says its controversial deal to trade land for a new luxury skyscraper, pocket park and midblock walkway where the demolished Utah Theater once stood remains a go — despite the clearest sign to date those plans are on indefinite hold.
A spokesperson for the city’s Redevelopment Agency said Wednesday a permit application by Texas developer Hines to pave over part of the property off Main Street for a new parking lot was only “an interim use.”
“We recognize that Hines is also exploring tempororary activation for part of the site as they continue to advance the project,” said Kathryn Hackman with the RDA. “The original agreement is still in place.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The wrecked inside of the historic Utah Theater in Salt Lake City as it was being razed in late April 2022.
Acknowledging that Hines has already blown through contractual deadlines to proceed with its 31-story 150 South Main Street Apartments tower, Hackman said as the developer “continues working to move the project forward, we are determining how to update the agreement’s schedule accordingly.”
Reached via email Wednesday, Hines told The Salt Lake Tribune pretty much the same thing:
“Conversations with the city are ongoing,” the global firm headquartered in Houston said in a statement. “We remain committed to the project and have every intention to deliver a top-quality building to the community.”
The privately held company’s statement said it planned to proceed with the 400-unit 150 South Main Apartments tower and other downtown features along Main Street “once it is economically viable to do so.”
“While current economic conditions limit our ability to launch the initially planned project for this site at this time,” added Hines senior managing director Dusty Harris, “we remain fully committed to the project and the Salt Lake community.”
‘Are they serious?’
(Image courtesy of Hines, via Salt Lake City) Rendition of a pocket park proposed next to the 31-story tower planned by Hines on the site of the former Utah Theater on Salt Lake City's Main Street.
As historic preservationists with a group called Friends of the Utah Pantages Cinematic Theatre fought in court to fend off the wrecking jaws, Hines hurried in the spring of 2022 to tear down the historic but badly dilapidated performance hall, a revered century-old entertainment venue and converted movie theater built in neoclassical style.
That haste, company officials said at the time, was critical to its schedule for fulfilling an exclusive deal with the RDA for obtaining the city-owned theater property for zero dollars in exchange for constructing new apartments and other downtown amenities.
“Every day of delay,” Harris told a judge in April 2022, before the demolition, “we view as a missed opportunity.”
(Al Hartmann | Salt Lake Tribune) People walk the ornate hallway of the old Utah Theater in 2008.
About a month later — and with the elegant 102-year-old hall, also called the Pantages Theater, destroyed except for a trove of salvaged relics, including a stunning skylight — Hines then warned its plans had bogged down and sought a one-year extension.
Its initial postponement has now stretched on for more than two years, while at the same time, market conditions for many commercial real estate ventures have deteriorated.
Hackman, with the RDA, said the delay “is due to increased costs of supplies and materials. The rise in expenses has impacted the timeline, but efforts are ongoing to address these challenges and move the project forward.”
Historic preservationist and Salt Lake City business owner Casey McDonough, who with others battled to save the venerable theater, said this week the proposed parking lot “was a little bit like the straw breaking the camel’s back.”
He has called for city officials to declare the developer in violation of its original pact with the RDA and make it return the choice property and theater relics and solicit a new round of proposals on how the property might be developed.
“Are they serious?” McDonough asked of folks at City Hall. “All these promises were made and they’re going to let Hines continue to keep its loaded deck and just put pavement over the site?”
Tower in limbo
In April, Hines’ Harris confirmed that the grand vision for a luxury tower — with 10% of its apartments rent subsidized, a rooftop green space and pedestrian pathways linking Main Street and the block’s interior — remained in limbo as the company continued to seek a new capital partner to help finance the project.
The development firm announced at the same time it would go ahead with refurbishing another Salt Lake City building, an office tower on South Temple formerly known as University Club Tower, into luxury apartments — a project valued at more than $70 million.
(Hines) A rendering of the converted exterior of the former University Club Tower in downtown Salt Lake City, turning offices into apartments.
The development news site Building Salt Lake reported in July that RDA officials had floated the empty Utah Theater site as a possible home for a rebuilt version of Abravanel Hall, as part of talks with Smith Entertainment Group on a new sports, entertainment, culture and convention district around the Delta Center, according to city documents obtained by the website.
Hackman told The Tribune on Wednesday that the agency “is not currently discussing the Utah Theater site as an alternative location for Abravanel Hall.”
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Abravanel Hall in Salt Lake City on Friday, May 17, 2024.
Two weeks ago, through a South Jordan subcontractor, Hines quietly applied at City Hall for a building permit to convert a portion of the storied theater locale into an asphalt parking lot, along with a retention pond and associated site improvements.
Records show the Aug. 15 application by South Jordan’s CIR Engineering on behalf of a Hines subsidiary was under review Wednesday by the city’s Building Services Department.
Hines said in its statement only part of the former theater site would be temporarily used for surface parking, creating about a dozen stalls to serve adjacent offices that lost spaces when a parking garage attached to Utah Theater also got torn down.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Demolition of the historic Utah Theater in Salt Lake City as it continued on May 5, 2022.
“Our intent,” the company said, “is to provide an activated space that will benefit the community until we can proceed with the project.”
In response to a related Tribune inquiry, the RDA said it had verified that Hines is safely storing objects it was tasked with removing and preserving from the Utah Theater as part of the April 2022 demolition. Under its original deal with the RDA, Hines was contractually obligated to reuse historic interior elements such as the skylight and a Tiffany chandelier in its new residential tower — or put them on public display elsewhere.
That pact also funded a digital archive aimed at capturing aspects of the once-majestic Pantages Theater, now hosted at https://pta.lib.utah.edu by the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Main Street facade of Utah Theater in Salt Lake City, as seen Nov. 30, 2021.