Critics of the Unity Center have made corporate sponsors for the west-side project skittish about committing cash for upgrades, according to Salt Lake City's public services director.

Construction on the Unity Center, a multipurpose community facility in Glendale, is scheduled to begin this fall with or without the sponsors. But the extra cash — up to $1.5 million — from companies such as U.S. Bank and American Express would help add classrooms and spruce up the facility, said Rick Graham, director of public services for Salt Lake City.

In an e-mail to Mayor Rocky Anderson, Graham blamed local media for negative community perceptions and said that they have discouraged a few corporations from committing to a New Market Tax Credit program run through the U.S. Department of Treasury.

Through the program, companies can get a 39 percent federal tax credit over seven years for donating money to qualified low-income community development projects. The Unity Center, with tenants Donated Dental, Salt Lake County and Salt Lake Community College, qualifies as such a project.

"Mayor, I feel like the captain of the Titanic," Graham wrote to Anderson on July 21. "Our New Market Tax Credit ship just hit an iceberg, and we may be taking on water."

Graham said this week that the Unity Center construction will proceed regardless of whether it can court private money. The difference would support a "grander design" beyond initial plans, he said.

"Construction costs have gone up so much over the last year that it's impossible for us to build everything that we want to build unless we bring new money into the project," Graham said. "With New Market Tax Credit funds, we would add the additional two classrooms to the Unity Center and make some additional building enhancements that would make the building a little nicer, a little more functional, a little more versatile. But not having those enhancements does not prevent us from having a functional building."

Anderson and his spokesman, Patrick Thronson, did not respond to e-mail and phone inquiries this week. Both have refused to comment to the Deseret Morning News for the past 50 days.

Plans for the Unity Center at the corner of 900 West and California Avenue came about at the end of the Main Street Plaza deal between Salt Lake City and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Anderson swapped the city's free-speech easement for 2.17 acres of church-owned land that will eventually hold the center.

Graham wrote that "the papers have never chosen to speak positively about the project because positive news about the negative energy this issue originated from would not interest the public."