Utah City has chosen developers with a “boutique ethos” to create the master-planned community’s 250,000-square-foot downtown entertainment and retail district right off the shores of Utah Lake.

The New York-based Odyssey Retail Advisors, which helped establish New York City’s Hudson Yards and Las Vegas’ Bellagio, will develop Utah City’s Broad Street district leasing and retail strategy.

Construction has already started on much of Utah City, a master-planned community in Vineyard, built with access to the city’s FrontRunner station and walkability as the keystone. Signs near the station proclaim: “Utah City is taking shape.”

Indeed, Bella’s Market, a grocery store operated by Lee’s Marketplace that boasts “everyday essentials” and “homegrown favorites,” has already opened. It’s flanked by pickleball and tennis courts and green-painted bike lanes and the first out-of-New York location of the Brooklyn-based Fini Pizza. Apartments and houses are built and ready for residents to move in — and “several hundred” already have, according to Utah City’s senior vice president of retail, Dave Harris.

The Broad Street district is envisioned as the city-within-a-city’s downtown.

Renderings of the planned Broad Street development show walkable plazas with benches and greenery aplenty, and brick roads lined by multistory buildings to host a mix of restaurants, retail, wellness, entertainment concepts and, of course, homes.

While the developers wouldn’t name the businesses they hoped to lure to Broad Street, principal Rick Strauss said in a news release that the project “gives us the opportunity to curate a retail mix that feels both elevated and relevant to the community.”

He later added that he wanted a mix of businesses that “gives people reasons to visit throughout the day” — whether they live in Utah City or not.

Harris said developers are looking for businesses that are “experiential,” “authentic” and “not just a cut and paste” of other retail and entertainment districts across the state.

“I’m not saying that we won’t have stores that are going to be duplicated in other areas of the Utah market,” he said, “but we really are pushing to be unique to the market.”

Harris said the Utah City project is unlike any he’s ever worked on — because it is more or less “starting from scratch.”

Instead of working around the existing infrastructure or other constraints, developers here, he said, can be intentional and incorporate walkability and public green space ”right into the fiber and core" of the project.

“That’s where you can really make it special,” he said.

Harris said that experience will also include architecture that feels “seamless and timeless” and integrates into the residential areas and green spaces nearby.

The Broad Street district, he said, will have more than 2,800 units of housing, more than 355 hotel rooms and a music venue that can seat more than 3,000 people.

Planners envision Broad Street as the connector between Utah City’s downtown and the rest of the development’s parks and green spaces.

Once completed, plans show the 700-acre Utah City will span across five districts and include some 17 million square feet in mixed-use development and more than 50 acres of parks and walking paths.

Utah City will also host the new 20-acre Huntsman Cancer Institute campus, the institute’s first expansion from its flagship campus at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. That campus expects to begin seeing patients in September 2028.

Vineyard was the fastest-growing city in the U.S. in the 2010s.