Is 300 East best place for safety complex?

The team that built Salt Lake's downtown library wants Mayor Ralph Becker to look elsewhere for the proposed $125 million public-safety complex.

Despite a list of seismic and aesthetic concerns from the library's architects and project manager, however, Becker and his staff insist a site along 300 East is the best option on the table.

"It is clear that either of the proposed site locations do (not) present undue hardships in that context," David Everitt, Mayor Ralph Becker's chief of staff, wrote in a letter to project manager Ken Ament on Wednesday.

In a May 14 letter to city officials, Ament said the site was a poor choice for the public-safety complex because it was plagued by liquefaction problems, a history of seismic activity and contaminated soil — all things that would drive up the cost of the project.

"It's a buildable site," he told the Deseret News on Wednesday. "There's never been a question they couldn't build on the site. The question is: Should they build on the site?"

Days later, a trio of architects involved with the award-winning library also penned a letter to city leaders. In it, Steve Crane, Mark Johnson and Moshe Safdie expressed opposition to building an emergency operations center and police and fire headquarters next to the library.

Becker and Everitt, meanwhile, have issued point-by-point responses to those criticisms.

In his letter, Ament pointed to a "high" liquefaction potential on the library block, but the site, like much of the Salt Lake Valley, is a moderate liquefaction risk, according to a city analysis. "Quite frankly, they would have never built the library there if it was unsafe," said Cory Lyman, the city's emergency-management director.

The city analysis is based on several decades of geotechnical studies, but a detailed study of the eastern portion of the block has not been conducted. The costly study would be commissioned should the city settle on either side of 300 East for the complex, Lyman said.

"I promise you, before it gets built, we will have that data," he said. "If we come up with data that prohibits building, that would clearly stop the project."