Suburban boom may be fueling projects in Salt Lake

A suburban housing boom likely is fueling construction and new projects in Salt Lake City, according to an economic analyst.

Salt Lake City issued permits for about $505 million of construction work in fiscal year 2006, which ended June 30. That's 51 percent more than the previous fiscal year, which registered $333 million in projects.

The increase may be due to a strong housing market outside Salt Lake City that brings residents and employees into the city for shopping, entertainment and work, said James Wood, director of the bureau of economic and business research at the University of Utah.

"What we've had is a really strong residential boom, but not in Salt Lake City, because it's land-locked," Wood said. "But the residential boom brings people, and it does lead to increased development downtown.

"If we weren't having any development in the suburban areas, we'd have less development downtown."

Large projects in Salt Lake City over the last year include renovating the Tabernacle on Temple Square, early construction on an archive library for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a pharmaceutical-manufacturing plant west of the airport called Cephalon, a new facade on the Zions Bank tower downtown, and several large housing projects.

Wood and Orion Goff, the city's director of building services and business licensing, said that the projects are the beginning of a boom for the capital. The largest project, of course, is the downtown mall renovation by the LDS Church, which is projected to add about $2 billion of demolition and construction during the next five years. The church has not announced when it will be filing plans.

"They're still dribbling in preliminary stuff and asking questions," said Goff. Church representatives told Goff to expect the first formal action on the renovation to be requests for demolition permits. "I think it's going to be pretty major demolition," Goff said.

Church spokesman Dale Bills declined to say Friday when the church will release plans or when it might start demolition on the existing malls. The mall renovation is part of what Wood called a history of "lumpy" investment in the city.

"When the church dumps all this money, they're going to have a lot of money downtown, and then we're not going to have a lot of money for a while after that," Wood said. "We're going to have $2 billion in the next five years, but it's going to be a long time before we have another $2 billion."