RDA board considers giving Boyer funds for Gateway area

The Salt Lake Redevelopment Board is considering whether to give the Boyer Co. almost $14 million to help build its massive proposed development in the Gateway area.

Boyer has requested the money in the context of established RDA assistance programs, but that still doesn't satisfy some members of the RDA board (the City Council in a different capacity).In a meeting Tuesday, board members Joanne Milner and Deeda Seed expressed skepticism over assisting a developer who already has so much money and who had been planning the development long before the Gateway assistance programs were in place - indeed, even before the Depot District RDA Project Area was established.

"We know it's not going to be unanimous," RDA Executive Director Alice Steiner said. "We just operate on that basis."

One thing that irks Milner is that for the affordable housing component of the 40acre development west of and including the Union Pacific Depot, Boyer has proposed that half comprise affordable owner-occupied housing rather than rental units.

"We're donating the monies (dedicated) to those with low incomes to those who can afford housing," she groused.

Milner and Seed have never been comfortable with the high-profile role Roger Boyer, chairman of the company that bears his name, has taken in the development of the 650-acre Gateway area, from 300 West to I-15 between North Temple and 900 South. They and others say his closeness to Mayor Deedee Corradini has unduly influenced her in her aggressive redevelopment of the area and say the rapid nature of the area's planned retransformation has run roughshod over existing, especially poorer, residents of the area.

Boyer has requested assistance on public street improvements, including extending Rio Grande Street through the development, burying power lines, environmental cleanup and a $7 million public plaza Boyer plans just west of the Union Pacific Depot. The company also wants the city to chip in on the $7.7 million it will spend in underground parking for residences and the $17 million required to renovate the depot itself.

The depot has been structurally and seismically suspect for a long time, but the state, which owns it, has held off renovation because of the high cost.

"All of these elements total over $42 million in costs from which the city and neighborhood will greatly benefit," Roger Boyer said in a letter requesting the assistance. "We will need help to meet our commitment."