In Salt Lake City, Sports Drive a New Vision for Downtown

A proposal to remake the area would please the owner of the city’s N.B.A. and N.H.L. teams. But others, including classical musicians, aren’t so thrilled.

In late April, about 60 members of the Utah Symphony were on break during a rehearsal of Massenet’s opera “Thaïs” when the organization’s chief executive, Steve Brosvik, matter-of-factly told them that the county was considering demolishing Abravanel Hall, their world-renowned home, as part of a plan to revamp downtown Salt Lake City.

The musicians were in shock. How could this be? Abravanel Hall had housed the symphony for 45 years, built with gold-leafed bridges, crystal chandeliers and some of the finest acoustics in the country.

“We got really depressed,” said Lori Wike, the symphony’s principal bassoonist. “And then we started organizing.”

With that, Wike, a 47-year-old with no experience in local government, found herself entering the sharp-elbowed world of politics. She joined a small but vocal group of musicians in taking on mayors, lawmakers and the billionaire who owns the two major professional sports teams that play in downtown Salt Lake City.

The musicians dug through planning codes, attended council meetings and began a media campaign to publicize their cause. They enlisted the help of architects, opposition politicians and John Williams, the fabled composer of scores from classic films like “Jaws” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

The task was formidable. City and county leaders were pushing ahead with an ambitious plan to remake up to 100 acres of downtown, largely at the behest of Ryan Smith, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Utah Jazz and his newly acquired N.H.L. team that will soon play in downtown Salt Lake City, along with two professional soccer franchises of which he’s a minority owner.

The plan includes moving some of the clunky Salt Palace convention center to create a corridor to connect neighborhoods to the east and west and filling it with gathering spaces, housing, bars, restaurants and shops that would become a centerpiece of the Winter Olympics when they return to the city in 2034. It also calls for the renovation of the Delta Center, the home arena of the Jazz and the hockey team.

Smith and Mike Maughan, an executive at Smith’s umbrella group, SEG, and a project leader of the downtown revamp, had said they wanted Abravanel Hall to remain in the district. But the possibility remained that the county, which owns the hall, could knock it down to rebuild it in a location that better suited the plaza. Jenny Wilson, the mayor of Salt Lake County, had told the symphony’s board in May that the most cost-effective option was to rebuild the hall, then spent months saying she had not reached a decision on the hall’s fate.

After five months, the musicians finally got some encouraging news: During a public meeting last month, Wilson said that the county intended to renovate the hall rather than tear it down for a rebuild.

“I am cautiously elated,” Wike said after watching the Sept. 17 meeting, though she, like her fellow musicians, knew that promises could be broken. On Oct. 1, the City Council approved a broad plan for the district that included $900 million in new taxes.

For decades, sports owners have dangled the possibility of moving their franchises to win subsidies from politicians and fans desperate to keep their teams. Economists say these deals, sometimes worth billions of dollars, almost never recoup the tax revenue they promise.

No longer content with updating their arenas and stadiums, sports owners are using their buildings as the nexus of larger real estate developments that bring in revenue that does not have to be shared with other teams. The plans in Salt Lake City are unique because they involve civic assets like the concert hall, beloved by small but influential constituent groups, which raises questions about who gets to determine the fundamental character of the city center.

“Anyone who believes that a jumbotron-fueled oversized glitzy sports center will be anything but a relic needing overhaul in less than 20 years needs to turn off their VCR and join the real world,” said Bree Scheer, an architect and member of the planning commission that said there was not enough information to properly evaluate the plans for the district.

The city’s mayor, Erin Mendenhall, said critics of the plan underestimated the risks of doing nothing. Smith, who owns more than 100 acres of land in Sandy, about a 30-minute drive south of Salt Lake City, could build an arena there. (He is building a training center for his hockey team there.) Mendenhall and other local politicians invoke other cities with struggling downtowns as a dire image of what Salt Lake City could become if the teams left.

“Losing the Utah Jazz is not an option,” Mendenhall said in an interview. “We’re trying to make sure we turn over every stone” to keep the team in place.

On a recent walk around the area, Smith, sporting a Utah Jazz cap, and Mendenhall noted how the convention center, with its jumble of loading docks and high walls, blocked traffic and deterred pedestrians in a city with boulevards that must be, by decree of Brigham Young, wide enough so a team of oxen could make a U-turn.

Smith and local officials say the Salt Palace lacks features newer buildings have. Abravanel Hall and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art are adjacent but mismatched appendages. A Japanese church and Buddhist temple sit forlornly to the west. There are a few hotels nearby, but most convention-goers leave the district to find a beer or a meal.

“We think as a city, we can curate that experience way better,” Smith said. “And this is a great opportunity to do that.”

SEG will get $900 million from a new halfpenny city sales tax, with SEG planning to spend $525 million of it to renovate the Delta Center, including making it more suitable for hockey. (The team’s inaugural season starts on Tuesday.) The remainder would go to developing the district. SEG has also said it would invest $3 billion in the district, but it wasn’t required to do so. Funding for the rest of the project, including renovating the music hall, has not been announced.

The county has also not disclosed how it intends to move the convention center and other buildings.

Detractors in Salt Lake City say the time and money spent on a for-profit entertainment district could be better used addressing more pressing needs, like helping to reduce the city’s homeless population and adding more affordable housing.

“This is not how government should go about it trying to address the city’s problems,” said Rocky Anderson, a former two-term mayor of Salt Lake City who said he was given assurances by SEG that it would help address the homeless crisis. “It’s a perverse way to make public policy.”

Musicians became consistent fixtures at public meetings.

“Nearly a billion dollars in taxpayer funds are being handed to a billion-dollar, for-profit company that still hasn’t been required to invest a single dollar of its own money into the project,” Mercedes Smith, the symphony’s principal flutist, said during a City Council meeting on Aug. 13. She added: “Now, the same company also seeks to bypass the public design review process. I ask, where does this end?”

Her husband, David Porter, a violinist, challenged Brosvik and symphony executives to do more to save the building. Jack Clark, an 18-year-old viola player for the Utah Youth Symphony, started a Change.org petition called “Save Abravanel Hall,” which has more than 50,000 signatures.

Scheer, the architect on the planning commission, was part of an informal coalition to save Abravanel Hall. So was Adrienne White, a preservationist who had nominated the hall, which was built in 1979, to be on the National Register of Historic Places. Her application will soon be evaluated by the National Park Service.

Other cities take years, not months, to consider major projects, and include more outside input. The land-use process for the construction of a soccer stadium in Queens underwent 122 votes over the past year. In Philadelphia, hundreds of people have flocked to meetings over the past two years to debate a proposal for a $1.5 billion basketball arena downtown.

In Salt Lake City, lawmakers discussed how to refresh the area late last year, and the state government introduced a “revitalization” bill in February. Discussions heated up in April, when Smith bought the N.H.L. franchise. Business organizations threw their support behind the project.

A five-person committee in the statehouse signed off on the general plan for the district with a recommendation that Abravanel Hall be preserved. Before approving the plan on Oct. 1, the City Council received public comments that were overwhelmingly against the tax hike.

During the walking tour, Maughan said, “I think it’s important to point out that just because it’s happening quickly doesn’t mean it’s not very thoughtful and very deliberate.”

“Amen,” Mendenhall responded. “There’s a lot of upside to a fast track.”

Some of those directly affected have less leverage than the musicians. Laura Allred Hurtado, the executive director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, which is also owned by the county, said she was not opposed to moving to a new building, but her organization had so far had little say where it might be, or where it would relocate in the interim.

A new building “would be transformative,” she said. “But it’s taking people at their word when they haven’t shown us the money.”

For the century-old Japanese Church of Christ, a block from the Delta Center, the overhaul is bittersweet. Many buildings in Japantown were torn down in the 1960s to make way for the Salt Palace. Jani Iwamoto, a former state senator and a member of the church, said that she did not oppose development but that the plans she had seen worried her.

“There’s already a 125-foot building now and two 600-foot buildings could go up, so our church will be in the dark,” she said. “They want to add a full-on bar next to the chapel. I’m worried about whether our church will survive all the construction.”

Some development is understandable given the city’s rapid expansion fueled by a booming technology industry. Utah grew 18.4 percent from 2010 to 2020, the fastest of any state in the country, and much of its growth over the next decade is expected to be in Salt Lake County, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah’s business school.

Since buying the Jazz in 2020, Smith has tried to refresh the state’s image into one of innovation and growth. A Utah native who made his fortune as one of the founders of Qualtrics, which makes digital questionnaires, Smith sees the downtown district as part of his legacy.

Fearful that Smith will move the teams to the suburbs if the project isn’t completed, local politicians have rushed to give SEG what it needs.

Mendenhall said during a public meeting that the agreement with SEG was the result of a “true negotiation,” with neither side getting everything it wanted. But when asked what concessions were made, representatives from SEG and Mendenhall’s office declined to answer.

“I think there’s a perception that the county’s in the pocket of SEG or what have you,” said Wilson, the county mayor, who said that was not the case. Rather, she continued, SEG is a “vital partner” because it controls the area’s two primary sports teams. The loss of the arena to the suburbs, she said, is “a loss to downtown that we won’t recover from.”

The musicians feel the same about Abravanel Hall.

At the Sept. 17 meeting, Wilson said she was committed to keeping the hall in it current form and location, adding, “We have a plan to do so.”

Wilson did not say what the plan was, only that it would be expensive.

When public comment began, Wike asked for an unequivocal promise that Abravanel Hall would not be torn down. Daniel McCay, a chairman of the state committee, said he would recommend that the hall be preserved.

Other participants raised concerns about the added tax burden.

Moments after public comment ended, the committee approved the agreement unanimously.

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