Council looks beyond church's plans

As residents and businesses in the Salt Lake area await the LDS Church's redevelopment plans, the City Council is keeping its eye on other work being done to revitalize downtown.

A number of people involved in the downtown planning processes updated the Salt Lake City Council on Tuesday about their various studies and projects dealing with issues ranging from mass transit to making construction as unobtrusive as possible.

Councilman Dave Buhler said he wants to refine the city's permit review process to work quickly and efficiently when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is ready to start the public process on its revamping of the city's two downtown malls and the surrounding Main Street area.

"What if after three or four years they're finally ready and then we put them off three or four years?" Buhler said. A number of permits and approvals by various departments as well as the Planning Commission and City Council are typically involved in making way for large-scale developments.

But beyond the church's plans, which are still largely shrouded in secrecy, business leaders are working on a vision for Salt Lake City's future.

"Downtown Rising," a program created by the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Alliance, was unveiled in May and further spelled out in an August newspaper insert. It is in the middle of a two-month harvest of public opinion.

Chamber spokeswoman Natalie Gochnour is happy with the input coming in so far. And it's not just from Salt Lake City residents; the input has come from across the state.

"It really is everybody's downtown," Buhler said. He pointed to a 2002 council-sponsored study that found "everyone feels a sense of ownership in downtown, and that's how we want it to be."

Among the ideas Downtown Rising aims to promote is the concept of Salt Lake City as an international business city. Gochnour said business leaders also want to see downtown developed with a focus on the nearby mountains and an aboveground City Creek as landmarks that make the city distinct.

Downtown also will benefit by the idea of districts, with different areas of town having distinct identities and purposes, Gochnour said. She pointed to the Gateway as an example of how districting can work.

The public input-gathering phase of Downtown Rising will continue through October, after which the Downtown Rising board will hash out further plans and ideas based on that input. Gochnour hopes to see a final vision drawn out in January.