Renaissance for downtown Provo?

PROVO — Historic downtown Provo can do much more than get its groove back, according to a market analysis by a national firm released Tuesday by the city.

Provo has sprawled away from Center Street, where it began in the 1850s, but city leaders launched a concerted effort several years ago to entice people back to downtown to live, shop, dine and work.

Now they want to spark a full-fledged renaissance, and they have a good chance to make it work, according to an 82-page market analysis by San Francisco-based Economics Research Associates.

The report shows Provo's downtown could capture large enough amounts of the housing, dining, unique shopping and office space markets to create a vibrant destination area.

For example, Provo recently completed the new Wells Fargo Center, a seven-story building with apartments, retail shops, a dance club, banking and 65,000 square feet of office space. The market analysis conservatively projects the need for about eight more downtown buildings, with that much office space in the next 10 years.

That demand could double with a coordinated effort, ERA senior vice president Steven Spickard said during a presentation to city employees and the City Council on Tuesday.

"I think downtown Provo has good potential, I really do," Spickard told the Deseret Morning News. "There's a whole lot of reasons people should want to be there.

"It has a good collection of interesting old buildings and facades that make for the traditional downtown pedestrian environment people are looking for, and the city has added some new developments recently that show it can work."

The analysis is part of a large effort launched during the summer of 2004 after an expert in downtown revitalization visited Provo and said the city should model its downtown after the Gateway shopping development in Salt Lake City.

The expert, Chris Leinberger, earned national recognition for spearheading the renovation of downtown Albuquerque, N.M.

The ERA market analysis is the last piece of data Leinberger encouraged the city to collect before creating a strategic plan for downtown, said Paul Glauser, director of Provo's redevelopment agency.

City leaders already have visited Albuquerque and Pasadena, Calif., for walking tours of successful renovation projects. They also commissioned a Dan Jones poll of Utah County residents and a feasibility study for a downtown convention center. And interns from Brigham Young University completed a parcel-by-parcel inventory of downtown.