The center is planned just west of the existing Sorenson Multi-Cultural Center. The Unity Center is expected to be a health and fitness mecca with educational and service components. There may also be room on the campus, near 900 West and California Avenue (1300 South), for a new Guadalupe Schools educational facility.

Turner and Graham said Monday that Salt Lake County won't be able to provide health and fitness services at the center for at least two years, if at all. That means the city may have to build the fitness facilities there without county help, they said.

The Unity Center time frame has been the source of controversy in the past. Responding to a 2003 Deseret Morning News article that included residents' concerns that the center was lagging behind schedule, Graham maintained the project was on track.

In a letter to the editor, published in February 2004, Graham pledged to have a list of tenants, a comprehensive business plan and conceptual design plans ready for public inspection by May 2004. One year later the city has yet to publicly produce any of those documents.

"We will have a business plan that we will develop and share," Graham said Monday.

But like the rest of the center, that plan or letters of understanding with potential tenants can't be finalized until the city buys the needed land.

Graham and Turner said the center would be open sometime in the first half of 2006, behind the much publicized 2005 opening date.

Anderson spokeswoman Deeda Seed said the mayor's office shares the alliance's frustration.

"We can understand their frustration because we've been frustrated, too," she said, speaking for Anderson, who is out of town.

Still, the mayor understands the reasons behind the delays, she said.

"Work has not stopped at all for one minute," Seed said.

The Unity Center was a key in Anderson's Main Street Plaza solution. In exchange for the city's public access on Main Street Plaza, the LDS Church ceded 2 acres of land for the Unity Center, and the Alliance for Unity — founded by Anderson and billionaire Jon M. Huntsman Sr. — pledged to donate $4 million for construction of the center. That money was added to $1 million already donated by billionaire James Sorenson.

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E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com