Rocky, builder cross swords

A major downtown developer says he won't do business with Salt Lake City until Mayor Rocky Anderson is out of office, after bickering between the two at Tuesday's City Council meeting led to a more intense confrontation in the hall.

Anderson had asked the council, in its role as the Redevelopment Agency board of directors, to reconsider a $6 million loan it recently had approved for an office tower planned for 222 S. Main Street. That project started as a joint effort between Hamilton Partners and Wasatch Property Management.

Anderson said the RDA's past dealings with Wasatch, involving another RDA loan, had left a sour taste in his mouth.

Wasatch owner Dell Loy Hansen told the council that Anderson's request was "a malicious attack." Hansen announced that Wasatch had pulled out of the 222 S. Main project. Anderson then withdrew his request for a reconsideration.

But when Hansen and Anderson left the meeting room together, it got ugly.

"You got the guts to look me in the face and talk about it?" Hansen asked Anderson.

Soon, the two were talking face-to-face — in fact, you might say, in each other's faces — and at one point, Anderson told Hansen to get his hand off his arm or "I'll kick your ass."

Hansen accused Anderson of opposing Wasatch because of Hansen's support for President Bush. When the president visited Salt Lake last year, pro-Bush signs popped up on a number of Wasatch-owned buildings. Bush's visit was also met with protest rallies that Anderson attended.

Hansen on Tuesday accused the mayor of backing "environmental freaks" and called him "a filthy liar."

In a letter to the council, Anderson said Wasatch had abused a loan from the RDA that had helped KUTV relocate its television studios from West Valley City to the downtown Wells Fargo Center, which Wasatch had purchased from American Stores.

Part of that agreement allowed Wasatch to earn credits toward the loan's 3 percent interest rate by showing it had brought new employees to Salt Lake City who would otherwise have worked outside the city.

Anderson's letter said the forms used to count those employees were "artfully drafted so as to enable an employer to honestly sign the form when, in fact, the claimed qualifying employees could have come from another office building within Salt Lake City."

Hansen said the forms were legitimate as far as he knew, and he said it was up to employers such as KUTV to oversee the way they were handled.