West-side Salt Lake center likely to open in '07

The three-year saga of the Sorenson Unity Center, a community center in Salt Lake City's Glendale neighborhood, will continue tonight with a City Council briefing for the oft-delayed project.

The center was to be the salve for Salt Lake City's Main Street Plaza wounds. Mayor Rocky Anderson swapped the city's easement on a block of Main Street for some of the land for the center in late 2002. The City Council approved Anderson's swap in June 2003 and took $4.5 million in donations to build the Unity Center on 2.17 acres of land that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave in exchange for the free-speech easement on Main Street.

Since the swap, though, it's been "delay after delay," said Mike Harman, chairman of the Poplar Grove community council. "We're not totally surprised. That seems to happen a lot on the west side."

In the last couple of years, the plans for the center have been pushed back, revised, and pushed back again. But city officials said Wednesday that those delays don't stem from a city dislike for the west side or a deliberate stalling.

The center, an amalgam of fitness, classroom, computer, and common space, was supposed to have conceptual drawings in late 2003. The drawings were then pushed back to spring 2004, with the building supposed to be done by late 2005.

At the City Council briefing tonight, Public Services Director Rick Graham plans to tell the council that construction can begin this summer, with the center scheduled to open in a year.

One of the longest delays has come from negotiating the purchase of two houses that sat between the Unity Center and the existing Sorenson Multi-Cultural Center. After a year and a half, the city is ready to demolish those buildings, said Van Turner, the councilman for the area.

"They could have had this thing up and running, but the building would not have been anywhere near as nice as it's going to be," when the two houses are gone, Turner said. The extra space will allow the two centers to link as part of the Sorenson Multi-Cultural Campus, named for James Sorenson, who provided some of the initial money for the project.