Downtown rebound: LDS Church unveils plans for 20-acre development

The plan has gone through a number of incarnations, with city officials, including Mayor Rocky Anderson, sending the church back to the drawing board. Anderson was on vacation and not at Tuesday's meeting, but he has seen the plans, and his spokesman said the mayor is very happy with them.

The council was also pleased, although some members also voiced some concerns.

"Over the years, this project has just become better and better," Councilwoman Jill Remington Love said.

Central to the City Creek Center will be six acres of open space: gardens and lawns clustered around water features following the historic south fork of City Creek, although the water won't come from the actual underground creek.

Running through the two blocks that currently house Crossroads and ZCMI malls — from West Temple to State Street between South Temple and 100 South — will be extensions of Social Hall Avenue, Regent Street and Richards Street. But these roads won't be for cars; they will be pedestrian walkways.

"One of the planning objectives has been to reduce the size of the large blocks in Salt Lake City," Bishop Burton said. "We have created eight blocks out of two."

The walkways will likely be covered in many areas, although church officials do not anticipate they will be entirely enclosed and climate-controlled.

"It's wonderful to see a shopping mall that has its roof lifted off and begins to connect with the outdoors," Councilman Soren Simonsen said.

The look of the buildings is far from settled. Bishop Burton said work on the architecture will take at least another year.

A skybridge is planned to run across Main Street, connecting retail and residential units on both sides of the project.

William S. Taubman, chief operating officer of Taubman Centers Inc., the developer managing most of the retail, said the project will "bring the best of urban design into a retail shopping district that will function as a first-class regional shopping center but also will reflect the heritage of Salt Lake City."

Simonsen said he was worried that while there may be a lot of good to the new, it's coming at the expense of some of what's good about the old.

"I think it's unfortunate that the architectural heritage of these blocks is being completely lost in this development," he said, specifically mentioning the loss of the Inn at Temple Square and the First Security building, also known as the Deseret Building.

Bishop Burton said both of those buildings were structurally unsafe and would have required major overhauls to become functional. He said the church is considering the possibility that some of the facade can be preserved.