Utah has several contenders for the site of a massive new homeless campus. Here are some options.

Utah officials have at least five sites in mind for a massive new homeless shelter, including a Salt Lake County-owned jail on the banks of the Jordan River, according to an internal state memo obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune.

The memo, written by the Office of Homeless Services, scores seven possible sites, including two that were deemed unsuitable for a campus containing a shelter and services.

The second-highest ranked option is the county-owned Oxbow Jail site along the Jordan River in South Salt Lake.

South Salt Lake, home to a large homeless resource center, “is already doing more than its share to address state homelessness,” the suburb’s mayor, Cherie Wood, said in a statement.

“State leadership is aware of our efforts and is considering this as they review the possibilities,” she said. “It is well understood that placing at least 1,200 homeless individuals at Oxbow Jail, an active incarceration site, on the Jordan River would be an enormous risk and a failure for everyone involved.”

The Sept. 12 memo does not specifically call for having Oxbow serve as a jail and homeless shelter at the same time. The availability of the site hinges largely — if not entirely — on county voters approving a half-billion-dollar bond in the fall election geared toward solutions for homelessness and criminal justice reform.

Money from the bond would be used to shutter Oxbow after it first serves as overflow for the county’s metro jail, also in South Salt Lake, as it undergoes improvements. That work is expected to wrap up in 2027, which would require temporary shelter in the meantime, according to the memo.

The Office of Homeless Services, however, must have a new shelter open next fall.

The confirmation that Oxbow is under consideration comes after leaders acknowledged their current strategy — placing smaller shelters in South Salt Lake and Salt Lake City — is not working. Earlier this month, the Homeless Services Board directed Utah’s Office of Homeless Services to also build a 1,200-bed shelter campus with offices where services can be offered.

At least four other locations were on the table for hosting the campus, the memo said, most of which are farther from places to find work, medical care and transportation than the Oxbow site.

The memo asserts that as recently as Aug. 13, Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, “clearly communicated their preference that the state of Utah pursue the Oxbow Jail site.”

Reached this week, Adams, Cox’s office and Schultz said they haven’t made up their minds. And board Chair Randy Shumway said in a statement that it was “highly unlikely” Oxbow would be the site of the campus.

“The team’s diligent research, particularly in the past few weeks,” Shumway said, “has unearthed better potential location options.”

Shumway did not name those sites and has emphasized that the board does not consider any site to be a front-runner location.

List is not final

At the time the memo was written, the Office of Homeless Services was looking for a site to host “at least 800 beds,” while also anticipating the need for a large campus.

The office has “been conducting an extensive search for potential locations that meet the needs of the campus model,” spokesperson Sarah Nielson said. “The property should be at least 30 acres with access to essential infrastructure, public transportation and other services.”

Representatives had talked with the owners of six of the seven sites in the memo about the possibility of acquiring their land for a shelter, Nielson said. The remaining site, on Beck Street, includes more than 130 parcels and is controlled by numerous landowners.

The office has until Dec. 15 to provide the Homeless Services Board with three finalists, which could include sites the memo did not have, Nielson said.

In an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board last week, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, who backs the public safety bond measure before voters, said she understands concerns about South Salt Lake perhaps hosting a huge shelter.

“I’m sensitive to that. I also am curious about, and not yet convinced, that the centralized plan is possible and appropriate,” Wilson said. “... I’ve told the (South Salt Lake) mayor that I support her, and that, in the end, she would have to sign off to that being the location.”

A county spokesperson declined this week to answer questions about Wilson’s thoughts on the possibility of using Oxbow as a shelter site or whether the county would be open to selling it for such a use.

The spokesperson said it is premature to discuss the future of Oxbow’s site before the jail closes, and said the county and the state have not discussed the parcel.

The report estimates it would take $28 million to retrofit more than 45 acres of the jail site and adjacent private property for the homeless campus. The document lists the central location and the site’s space to expand as benefits of building there. But it also notes using the site may require relocating the Jordan River Trail’s path, giving South Salt Lake more money for an emergency response workforce and shuttering or moving other offices for social services to open up more land for development.

The Jordan River has long struggled with a proliferation of illegal homeless camps, including near the Oxbow site.

State leaders say there’s no preferred site

Reached for comment Tuesday, Adams, the Senate president, denied having a favorite location.

“We appreciate the collaborative partnership with South Salt Lake as we work together to tackle homelessness,” Adams said in a statement. “No decisions have been made. At this time, we do not have any preferred options as we continue to explore all areas and evaluate a wide range of various possibilities.”

Cox also does not have a site preference and is awaiting the Homeless Services Board’s recommendation, a spokesperson from his office insists.

Schultz, meanwhile, said in a statement he once thought Oxbow appeared to be the best option.

“However, after further looking into the issue and having conversations with Mayor Wood and others, I believe that taking Salt Lake City’s problem and dumping it on a small city like South Salt Lake is not the right approach,” Schultz said.

“Salt Lake City leaders need to step up to the plate, take responsibility, and enforce policies to stop the criminal activities on the streets of Salt Lake City,” he said. “This camp should be placed within Salt Lake City limits.”

Three of the other four viable locations outlined in the memo are in Utah’s capital.

The highest-ranked location is the Standlee Warehouse site just south of Interstate 80 at 5 S. 5100 West, although the memo estimates it would cost almost double the Oxbow site.

A swath of smaller properties north of downtown between Beck Street and Interstate 15 are also listed as a potential location.

The lowest-rated viable option, according to officials’ internal scoring, is the site of the Lee Kay Conservation Center at roughly 7200 West and 2100 South. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has expressed interest in gifting land elsewhere to the Utah Department of Natural Resources to make up for loss of the conservation land, according to the memo.

A church-owned parcel on the western boundary of West Valley City, along Bacchus Highway at roughly 5400 South, is also included as an option.

Two other locations just west of Salt Lake City International Airport were also explored but ultimately rejected.

All of the viable sites in the document meet the since-determined requirement of being at least 30 acres.

Advocates weigh in on sites

Soren Simonsen, executive director of the Jordan River Commission, shared concerns that the massive campus — similar in size to the old downtown Road Home shelter that shuttered in 2019 amid the state’s move to the scattered-site model — would be hard to manage, especially for a small government like South Salt Lake.

Simonsen pointed out the Oxbow site is only a stone’s throw from the existing Pamela Atkinson Men’s Homeless Resource Center, the largest such facility in the state. The suburb, meanwhile, is the smallest city in the Salt Lake Valley.

“This population between those two homeless resource centers will absolutely overwhelm their public services, their ability to provide a quality of life, both for existing city residents and for those experiencing homelessness,” Simonson said. “My biggest concerns are really with the idea of having a large campus of this magnitude.”

Far-flung options, however, have one longtime advocate worried about access.

“It’s concerning that if you build a facility in a place where people find it that hard to get there, that instead of using it, people find places to hide,” said Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center. “You’ll have people trying to sleep behind garbage cans and under bushes instead of going there.”

Tibbitts said he would be most enthusiastic about the Beck Street option, but noted that its location near a cement plant, quarries and refineries could worsen the health of Utahns experiencing homelessness, who are more likely to have asthma than the general population.

The state must spend a one-time allocation of $23.8 million from the Legislature for a new shelter by the end of next June. The Homeless Services Board has directed the Office of Homeless Services to open the new facility by next October.

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