Lehi project shares the Gehry 'look'

LEHI — Here's the idea: provide an iconic skyscraper, five-star hotel, upscale-but-affordable housing, sports arena, shops, restaurants, plenty of park space — and have it all designed by a world-renowned architect.

It sounds a lot like the proposed Frank Gehry project in Lehi, right?

It also sounds like the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Grand Avenue project in Los Angeles, Calif., and the King Alfred project in Hove, England.

Those projects are also being designed by Gehry and, except for some specific details, they are surprisingly similar.

Aside from being met with some opposition from each of their surrounding communities, the projects outside Utah all feature hotel and residential towers, a mixture of retail, restaurants and entertainment, variations of a glass structure, upscale apartments and an emphasis on promoting an active, urban lifestyle.

And while coincidences among the projects could seem like some kind of architectural conspiracy, local entrepreneur Brandt Andersen, who commissioned Gehry to build his Point of the Mountain project, insists the similarities are purely happenstance.

"There are a lot of elements (of the projects) that are strictly coincidental, but there's no silver bullet there," Andersen said in an interview with the Deseret Morning News. "There's no smoking gun connecting them all."

A spokesman from Gehry's firm reinforced Andersen's statement, saying that glass is a common material that is used in contemporary architecture and the projects' likenesses are merely conceptual, not marketed copies of one design.

"We design buildings that are profoundly influenced by the use, the site and the vision of the client," said Gehry Partners LLP partner Mark Salette. "That makes them unique. There is continuity in the development of our architectural language that ties projects together. This is evolution, not duplication."

Representatives from Forest City Ratner Cos., developers of Atlantic Yards; and The Related Cos., developers of the Grand Avenue project, agree with Anderson and Salette. Each developer asserts that the projects are individually unique and dissimilar in design.

Each developer also stresses that the ideas came about independently of Gehry, although Gehry may have "tweaked" some of the proposals by adjusting density and height in some cases.

Salette noted that the project ideas are most connected through their intended impact on their respective communities.

"These projects are all large-scale developments with a mixed-use program that are meant to transform urban areas, or a suburban area, in the case of Lehi, and to connect existing neighborhoods," Salette said.