Utah’s premier redevelopment project will have a new centerpiece.
The state land authority guiding a multibillion-dollar remake of the empty former prison site in Draper will pursue a 5,000-seat, $100 million entertainment venue to anchor its first phase.
Members of the board overseeing how state-owned land at Point of the Mountain gets redeveloped agreed on Tuesday to finalize financing for a 100,000 square-foot venue, adjoining promenade, parking and other key amenities at the center of the largest project of its kind in state history.
(Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, via The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority) An early rendering of the proposed setting for an entertainment and retail center at The Point.
“This is something we need in order to kick this thing off — and it seems like we’ve got it,” an excited Draper Mayor Troy Walker said Tuesday as the panel gave unanimous initial approval to the bond-funded venue and related upgrades.
The planned 4.74-acre entertainment complex is to be run by Oak View Group, a Denver company that operates 400 such sites worldwide. The firm, which oversees ticketing for some Utah college events, also plans to chip $2.5 million of its own funds toward the facility.
State partners on The Point have enlisted global firm Gensler, based in San Francisco, to design the indoor venue.
On top of adding a crucial draw for The Point’s other commercial, residential and open spaces, Walker said, the entertainment complex and an initial 180-stall surface parking lot — eventually to be replaced by a parking garage — will all fit well with its central pedestrian promenade and emerging river-to-range trail system.
(The Point Partners) A map showing where an anchor entertainment venue would be located at The Point in Draper.
Economic data offered by the state’s main contractors at The Point indicate the venue and other upgrades are projected to generate 77 full-time jobs and $228 million in new state tax money over 40 years — along with an overall boost to Utah’s GDP of as much as $1.34 billion.
This is the first major portion of The Point’s choice real estate to be given a go-ahead as its own “sub-campus” since crews finished demolishing the old penitentiary last year and launched work on utilities and a key road extension to the project’s initial 100-acre core.
Officials with The Point say it all represents a major inflection point, as decades of painstaking work starts to reflect in vertical buildings and commerce.
‘Pretty compelling’
(The Point Partners) A cross-section rendering of a 5,000-seat entertainment venue proposed for The Point in Draper.
The Point of the Mountain redevelopment, now called The Point, has been billed for years as once-in-a-generation refresh of those open acres of prime real estate in rapidly growing southern Salt Lake County, west of Interstate 15.
Shaped by many years of public input and planning, The Point is envisioned to bring about a dense mixed-use community of over 600 acres, with new offices, shops, homes and green spaces built around a special research-district-turned-economic-engine for the state.
Consultants told the panel Tuesday the entertainment hub will have an advanced and flexible design letting it showcase a variety of live acts by touring artists, sports and community events as part of $196 million or more in associated improvements, including $32 million for parking.
“It’s pretty compelling and fits a gap in the marketplace,” said real estate and hospitality analyst Robin Hunden with Chicago-based Hunden Partners. Its market analysis projects up to 120 events and more than 200,000 visitors yearly.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) After years of planning and site prep, Utah broke ground on the extension of Porter Rockwell Boulevard through The Point, marking the start of Phase 1 of development in late 2024
Analysis showed the venue’s versatile design and seating flexibility would ensure “this project would absolutely sing” compared to regional competitors, Hunden said. Making it a midsize venue, consultants said, made it an easier mesh with touring schedules at venues in nearby cities such as Boise, Denver and Reno.
The Point’s entertainment complex would be strategically located at several crucial nodes of its network of intertwining and shop-laden walkways and green pockets.
Patrick Gilligan, representing the state’s consortium of private development partners for The Point, said the venue will be both a community draw and drive commercial growth — not least by boosting leasing and other investments and encouraging folks to stay longer and spend more while visiting.
(The Point Partners) A map featuring a 5,000-seat entertainment venue proposed at the east end of a centerpiece promenade at The Point, Utah's redevelopment project at the former state prison site in Draper.
Its cultural center of gravity, Gilligan said, will also boost the quality of life for the many thousands of residents who might live at The Point someday.
Under state guidelines, Phase 1 is supposed to include about 3,300 apartments and other multifamily housing types. About 400 of those units will be kept affordable. Of those, roughly a third will be accessible to Utahns making 60% of the area’s average incomes and the rest, to folks at 70% to 80% of that benchmark.
This formal application to carve land out at The Point for an entertainment campus first emerged in February. The notion of building a sizable concert venue, recreation facilities or a professional sports stadium to give the redevelopment a statewide focus, however, has been there since some of the public’s earliest brainstorming.
‘Opening act’
(Point of the Mountain State Land Authority) A rendering of another portion of The Promenade in The Point, a state redevelopment project in Draper. Plans have long envisioned an entertainment venue in the development for concerts, sports and digital gaming events.
As they gave it a green light — and in a clue of their clear enthusiasm — members of the recently slimmed-down Point of the Mountain State Land Authority offered some of their fantasy headliners for arena’s first show:
Co-Chair Lowry Snow, a former state representative and lawyer from St. George, jokingly said he has a granddaughter who “would love to have Taylor Swift for an opening event there.”
South Jordan Mayor Dawn Ramsey countered, tongue in cheek, that she would instead happily propose a motion to book country legend Reba McEntire for the venue’s inaugural.
The land authority ultimately voted to allow its co-chairs and executive director Mike Ambre to finalize and sign contracts on a complex package of infrastructure bonds that will raise up to $196.8 million to pay for it all.
Of that, as much as $106 million would go toward the venue structure; $32 million for parking; $23 million for roads and utilities; and $20.9 million for the tree-lined promenade and connecting streetscapes at the heart of The Point. Another $14 million of the pending bond issuance, or about 7.5% of the overall price tag, has been built in to pay for design and contingency construction costs.
A financial consultant told the panel that the new bonds — to be issued under a specially created public infrastructure district — would be paid off over the ensuing decades with sales and property taxes from the completed project, as well as revenues from ticketing and parking.
Tuesday’s approval was the first formal vote by the land authority since state lawmakers recently pared it down from 12 members to seven. Panel co-chair and state Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, said streamlining made the board more nimble as The Point moved squarely into its development phases.
