Mayoral hopeful backs skybridge

Salt Lake City mayoral candidate Jenny Wilson has put her support behind the LDS Church's controversial plans for a skybridge spanning Main Street.

In her online campaign blog Wednesday, the Salt Lake County councilwoman wrote that she was backing the planned pedestrian walkway "after careful study and consideration."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' real-estate arm, Property Reserve Inc., has proposed building the skybridge to connect the second level of retail at its planned City Creek Center development, which will fill two blocks at the heart of downtown.

The bridge has met with mixed reactions, with opponents such as Mayor Rocky Anderson and local urban-planning experts decrying it as a likely detriment to street-level pedestrian activity and proponents saying it is vital to the massive project's success.

Wilson wrote Wednesday that her support rested partly on the fact that City Creek Center will be "the largest 'green' development ever undertaken in Salt Lake City." She praised the project as a needed economic boost to bring pedestrians, shoppers and others downtown, and she said her study has convinced her that the project needs the bridge to thrive.

"Far from being a menace to Main Street's vitality, I see the pedestrian bridge as a vital connector between the two sections of the development," Wilson wrote.

Whoever becomes Salt Lake City's next mayor in November's election will likely play a key role in determining whether the bridge goes forward.

The mayor has the authority to sell air rights to the developer, and Anderson has said that he will not sell. He is looking at ways to pre-empt the sale, including selling the rights to a nonprofit entity or selling a conservation easement.

The other candidates for mayor have already taken a stand on the skybridge. City Councilman Dave Buhler is one of the bridge's main proponents.

"This is kind of a no-brainer, something we ought to do, but we ought to do it right," Buhler said at a City Council meeting in April, when the bridge was discussed.

Another council member running for mayor, Nancy Saxton, has joined the majority of the council in voting in favor of master-plan amendments that would allow the city to consider skybridges generally, pending design approval. But she has not taken a stand on the City Creek bridge because details of its design have not been spelled out.

House Minority Leader Ralph Becker, D-Salt Lake, said at an April candidate debate, "Skybridges can work in very limited circumstances. I haven't been convinced by everything I've seen" that the City Creek bridge is needed. Becker is a professional urban planner.

Colorectal surgeon J.P. Hughes has said, "I love the idea" of a skybridge. Centro Civico Mexicano director John Renteria, meanwhile, worries the bridge will benefit the City Creek Center and its retailers but not downtown at large.

One candidate, former City Councilman Keith Christensen, has not taken a public stand on the bridge.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com