Rocky offers alternative to skybridge

Rocky Anderson hasn't decided yet whether he'll veto a change in policy that opens the door to skybridges downtown, but he's pushing for an alternative: shutting down a block of Main Street.

The Salt Lake City mayor on Wednesday responded to the City Council's 6-1 vote Tuesday to amend the city's downtown master plan to allow for skybridges under some circumstances. He sent the council a memo saying the vote "conflicts with the city's long-standing commitment to protecting our view corridors and enlivening streets."

Anderson instead proposed closing Main Street between 100 South and South Temple to traffic.

The mayor has long been a critic of the skybridge plan, proposed by the LDS Church's real-estate arm Property Reserve Inc. and its development partner Taubman Centers Inc.

They want the bridge to connect the second level of shopping in the church's planned City Creek Center development. But Anderson and others say it will channel shoppers from one end of the project to the other, bypassing Main Street and effectively creating an enclosed mall.

Closing the block to vehicle traffic "would be a way to unify the development, encourage pedestrian traffic between both halves of it and enhance the other efforts by the developer to make the mall more permeable to pedestrian traffic while still preserving the view corridor and allowing for more sidewalk activity," said Anderson's spokesman, Patrick Thronson.

Under Anderson's plan, TRAX light-rail trains would still run down Main Street. The mayor's office is looking at several options, including creating a number of crossing points where pedestrians could traverse the tracks.

Council members and Taubman officials contacted Wednesday were underwhelmed by the idea.

"It does nothing to address the issues that are related to the skybridge," Taubman vice president Bruce Heckman said. "It doesn't address the circulation at the second level."

Council members raised the same point: The issue, they said, isn't that Main Street is hard to navigate but that the two-level retail component of the project, which spans both blocks of the 20-acre project, would not be viable if it wasn't continuous.

Heckman said that the street closure would snarl traffic, diverting cars to already busy roads such as West Temple and State Street and forcing vehicles down 100 South, which dead-ends at West Temple.

"We think it would make downtown a place that people would avoid because of the traffic congestion," Heckman said.