With just 10 days left until the last Salt Lake Bees pitch is thrown at Smith’s Ballpark, city officials are on deck, gearing up to solidify the future of the stadium site and its surrounding neighborhood.
The Larry H. Miller Co. announced in January 2023 that the Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels would be leaving Utah’s capital for South Jordan’s Daybreak development despite Salt Lake City officials attempting to keep the team in its historic home at the corner of West Temple and 1300 South. The move has unsettled the Ballpark neighborhood, with residents questioning what could come next in the heart of the community. The stadium site has a history of hosting baseball dating back to 1915.
Now, city officials are working out plans for the future of the soon-to-be-empty stadium that sits on 13.5 acres in the middle of the city.
“I want to see a thriving, vibrant community center that is active 365 days a year,” Mayor Erin Mendenhall said, “with toddlers to centurions.”
What exactly that looks like remains to be seen. The city has hired a design consulting firm, Perkins&Will, to offer three options for the site and how those options could be used: the stadium structure remains, a partial demolition of the ballpark or a complete teardown. The company will present those options to the city’s Redevelopment Agency in December.
By March, Mendenhall hopes to have a guiding road map for the site, including possible features that could be built.
Salt Lake City Council member Darin Mano, who represents the neighborhood, said the most frequent request he’s heard is for open space to be a part of the redevelopment. Mendenhall, meanwhile, mentioned possibly including spaces for early childhood education and access to healthy food and job training.
Officials said splitting up the 13.5 acres into separate parcels for separate uses, adding new housing and creating ground-level retail shops are all other possibilities.
Mere months before the team announced its departure, the City Council adopted a plan for the Ballpark neighborhood centered on the stadium and further activation of its surrounding streets. Since then, the city has launched its Ballpark NEXT planning process and has gathered feedback on what residents want to see at the redeveloped site.
The Bees are set to begin play at Daybreak Field in South Jordan early next spring.