Planners, City Creek on different paths
Paving patterns create quandary for commission
Developers of the $1.5 billion downtown project find themselves at loggerheads with Salt Lake City planners over paving patterns on public sidewalks near entrances to the development.
City planning officials say the developers' plans to extend paving patterns and materials from the interior of the mixed-use development onto city sidewalks goes against city standards and will not be allowed.
Officials from City Creek Reserve Inc. and development partner Taubman Centers Inc. disagree, saying visuals used throughout the approval process for the development clearly showed the pattern changes and were adopted when the Planning Commission OK'd the project in January.
The developers appeared before the Planning Commission on Wednesday in hopes of receiving clarification on the issue. Following an hourlong discussion, planning commissioners unanimously voted to table the issue until it could be reviewed by city attorneys.
"We've come to a real dilemma," said Allan Sullivan, legal counsel for CCRI. "(City) staff is asking us to ignore the approved plans."
Salt Lake City's downtown master plan calls for streets in the central business district to follow a consistent set of paving patterns, said Joel Paterson, city planner.
Main Street, where developers are planning the most change in sidewalk pattern, has its own set of downtown standards (80 percent brick and 20 percent concrete), as does the downtown portion of South Temple, Paterson said.
"The city's position is that a consistent paving pattern along the public way helps unify downtown and provides a consistent theme," he said.
Mary De La Mare-Schaefer, who oversees planning as the city's interim community and economic development director, said the conditions for approval laid out by the Planning Commission were clear to city staff.
The difference of opinion surfaced during a recent meeting between the developers and city planners, De La Mare-Schaefer said.
"We felt like it was a legitimate concern to bring forward to the Planning Commission," she said. "This is a huge project. We want to make sure everyone understands what the decision was and how to move forward."
Response from planning commissioners indicates that a majority of them do not believe they approved paving patterns or materials for the project — especially if they run contrary to city standards.
"I don't think it even crossed our minds," said Kathy Scott, planning commissioner. "If we were approving something like that, we would have talked about the materials. We never talked about materials."
Sullivan said developers submitted plans over a period of about a year that consistently showed a distinctive pattern running from the interior of the project onto public sidewalks.
"During this entire process, (city planners) did not tell us that they didn't like our paving plan," he said. "Staff did not tell us that the paving plan could not extend into the public right of way, even though every drawing we submitted over a year showed the paving pattern."
Paterson disputed that claim, saying staff from the very beginning of the approval process informed the developers of city paving standards.
The city standards also affect the developers' plans to construct pylons at each side of Main Street to highlight the mid-block crosswalk between South Temple and 100 South. The developers are proposing to include the City Creek Center logo and name on the pillars, which would qualify them as signs and prohibit them from being in the public right of way.
The developers are asking the city attorney's office to determine whether the Planning Commission has the authority to overrule city staff on the design elements. Even if it's determined the Planning Commission can make those decisions, it's unclear whether it would do so.
City Creek Center is a 20-acre private development project of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The project will bring a mix of retail, residential and office space to the two-block area bordered by West Temple, South Temple, State Street and 100 South.
E-mail: jpage@desnews.com
Recent comments
Right- this project was supposed to help Main Street not money grubbing...
Anonymous | April 24, 2008 at 7:40 a.m.
