Downtown student housing will likely become a reality as early as next year as part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' new development efforts.

As part of its massive downtown redevelopment project, the LDS Church plans to construct 900 new housing units. The church confirmed this week that some of those units are expected to be student housing.

LDS Church Presiding Bishop H. David Burton, who is overseeing the church's redevelopment project, said the church is unsure how many of the 5,000 students expected to take classes downtown will actually want to live there.

Those students will include roughly 1,200 at LDS Business College and the rest enrolled at a new Brigham Young University extension. Both schools are set to open at the Triad Center by 2006.

LDS Business College's current campus along South Temple in the Avenues has several dozen dormlike units. The on-campus units are female-only and can house up to 112 students. Bishop Burton said he expects the church to move those on-campus units to the Triad Center.

"We will probably provide at least that much housing close to Triad Center for them," Bishop Burton said.

While much of the church's housing component for the downtown project is in flux, there is also talk that even more student housing may be provided downtown.

"There could be expansion, but we don't know that right now," said Matt Tittle, LDS Business College's assistant dean of students.

Tittle said the college has been studying its students' needs to find out if there are greater desires for on-campus housing. The college's median age is 21, but most of the students using on-campus housing are younger than that, usually 18 or 19, Tittle said.

"Greater than 50 percent of our students come from outside the state of Utah, so we know there is a need for housing," he said.

The plans to turn Triad Center into a higher-education facility are part of the church's overall plan to revitalize downtown. The church is partnering with the Michigan-based Taubman Co. to raze and renovate its two downtown malls, Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center. Those malls will be transformed into a mixed-use project that includes housing and retail and office space.

For a couple of years now, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson has discussed the possibility of bringing University of Utah student housing to downtown.

Anderson thinks having students downtown would enliven the atmosphere and go a long way toward creating a 24-hour city. But Anderson's plans to put such housing on Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency property downtown have stalled.

RDA executive director Dave Oka said plans to raze two low-income housing buildings on State Street between 200 and 300 South and build new student housing for U. students have been put on the back burner. The City Council and Anderson don't want to displace low-income residents to make way for students, Oka said.

"I don't think it was the right time because we still have people living there."

The RDA purchased the State Street land two years ago.

---

E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com