The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously Thursday night to keep low-income housing on State Street — at least for the time being.

The council quelled the immediate concerns of low-income housing advocates by voting to delay tearing down and to continue renting hotel rooms in three buildings between 237 and 255 S. State.

The city owns four buildings, three of which include low-income hotels called single room occupancy housing, or SROs. The two- and three-story buildings are part of a project in the central business district downtown that will eventually be redeveloped, although the City Council does not yet have exact plans for the site.

"It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up to think that we would go in, tear down a building and not have a re-use plan for this particular lot," said Nancy Saxton, a councilwoman who represents downtown. "If you can put some money into it so that it's livable, why not (do it)?"

Thursday night, city staff said one option for the properties was to spend $10,000 for a new roof on the Salt Lake Blue building at 241 S. State. The roof and additional, minor repairs — including a coat of paint on the facades — would spruce up the buildings enough to make them habitable, a staff report said.

The tenants of the three hotels — some of whom were displaced when the Stratford Hotel around the corner burned on June 29 — will be able to remain in their rooms. That's a decision that relieved Michael Whiteman, who lives in the Regis Hotel at 255 S. State .

"I'm happy to say that I'm very comfortable in there," Whiteman said to the council. "I like your suggestion that that structure there, with a few dollars, can be brought up to par."

Council members voted to continue renting, look at fixing up the buildings, develop a plan for the site that may or may not involve tearing down the buildings, and talk about maintaining low-income, single-occupancy housing elsewhere.

Whiteman and his neighbors are an important part of downtown vitality, said low-income housing advocates who attended the meeting, and any future development should include provisions for relocating the residents or building similar housing elsewhere.

"We've had hotels like (these) for 100 years, so it's not a population that's going to go away," said Amy Rowland, director of housing development for Mercy Housing Utah.

In the meantime, the council also will look at finding commercial tenants for the ground-level space, which is mostly vacant now.

"I'm very upset that we have (an empty) ground floor level streetscape that looks like it's in fairly decent shape," Saxton said. "We need to get something in there. There are all kinds of groups that need a place to be — get them in there. We need activity on the street."

---

E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com