Expanded 'Palace' is off and running

On time, under budget and ready to go, with the exception of a throw pillow or two.

The artwork has been hung, the stairwells are finished and all the light switches work at the Salt Palace convention center, which will officially debut its expanded space during a gala today.

"We've got a facility now that will take us to the next level," said Allyson Jackson, Salt Palace general manager. "We're no longer one of the second-tier convention centers. We're right up there with some of the best in the United States."

The finished facility now includes 145,000 square feet of additional exhibit space, an additional 72,000 square feet of meeting room space and 404 new parking stalls. In total, the Salt Palace now has 515,000 square feet of exhibit space and 164,000 square feet of meeting rooms, including a 45,000-square-foot ballroom and 66 meeting rooms. It boasts the largest solar-power lighting system installed to date in Utah.

Aesthetic touches include two major Gordon Huether art pieces (one exterior, one interior), Japanese-themed metalwork decorating the exterior gates to the facility's loading docks, and a Japanese garden between the Japanese Church of Christ and the facility's new parking garage. The latter two are tributes to the Japanese-American community that once flourished downtown and which, Jackson said, largely ended with the completion of the original Salt Palace in 1964.

Along the way, the $58 million project met every deadline, and in the end was completed "a couple of million" dollars under budget, which Jackson called "a miracle of miracles."

"When you consider that it was a fast-track project, that it was design-build, and that we had to stop construction for almost two months (to host the Outdoor Retailer trade shows), and still came in under budget, I think it's safe to say that that's a bunch of people doing their jobs very, very well," Jackson said.

Monday's festivities cap a process born in August 2004, amid some controversy — over money, need, capacity and whether the expansion was being made to suit one client (Outdoor Retailers).

Erin Litvack, associate director of Salt Lake County's Department of Community Services, said it was a bit of a nail-biter but well-resolved.

"It was really exciting to be a part of such a unique process," Litvack said. "When I think to how this started, it started with trying to put together funding for a parking garage. People came together — the chamber (of commerce,) the Legislature, the county and our hospitality partners. Everybody came to an agreement about how important this project was for the economic viability and the tourism and convention industry at this time. It was an exciting process, nail-biting at times but exciting."