Ordinance could turn store fronts into homes

A city of commuters could soon give way to a town of 24-hour urban dwellers if Salt Lake City planners have their way.

A new ordinance before the city's planning commission would allow apartments and condominiums on the ground floor of the city's downtown, including Main Street. Currently, such livable space is restricted to floors above or below street-level commercial.

"There are people in line, pounding on the doors of my office begging for a downtown, live-work urban loft space. I just say get in line," said Babs De Lay, planning commissioner and principal broker of Urban Utah Homes and Estates. "This is the kind of space we couldn't give away three to five years ago, and now there isn't anything like it."

That change is long overdue, De Lay said, and could increase the vitality of Salt Lake City's downtown and even change the culture of the city. From a city with a mass exodus at 5 p.m., Salt Lake City could become a downtown dotted with grocery stores and boasting an unprecedented nightlife.

"It's going to add more people, and people living downtown usually care more about downtown and improving downtown," she said.

Although the city already encourages live-work buildings with first-floor retail or office space and upper-level condos, De Lay said street-level residences could lure even more city-dwellers who want to live "in the thick of everything."

The city only has about five such live-work buildings now, and five more are in the works, said De Lay, who works on the first floor of the Dakota Building and lives on the top floor of the downtown building.

The proposed ordinance, which will come before the Planning Commission Wednesday for a public hearing, would still incorporate the city's guidelines of at least 40 percent glass facades on the first floor downtown and at least 60 percent glass on Main Street.

That 1995 ordinance aimed at preventing drab, solid-wall store fronts facing the street, deputy community develop- ment director Brent Wilde said. Removing housing from the first floor was an extra measure to reinforce the downtown revitalization, he said.

Now, however, he said city planners believe they can maintain the urban feel while implementing residential on the street level.

"If they develop the glass with downtown residential, they'll still achieve that intended flavor of having a front facade that's open and maintaining a relationship between the street," Wilde said.

First-floor residential would only increase that pedestrian-friendly feel city planners are aiming for, he added. An increased core of city-dwellers could also add to the effort to revitalize Main Street and the downtown area — roughly between 200 East and 600 West and 1000 South and North Temple.