What was said · Salt Lake City
Council Work Session Meeting
Tuesday, February 17, 2026 — the full transcript. Click any sentence to hear it.
Yes, hello. Welcome to the February 17th, 2026 City Council Work Session Meeting. Our meetings are public and you're welcome to join us in person about watching from the Council agenda page. You can also watch us through Zoom on YouTube. We hope you will continue to join us in whichever manner you feel the most comfortable.
This is a work session meeting during which there's no public comment. Please join us tonight during our 7pm formal meeting to share our comments. We of course welcome your feedback anytime. You can send us that feedback through mail at PO Box 145476, Salt Lake City, Utah 8414. You can also email us at console.commons at slc.gov. You can send us a 24-hour phone comment at 801-535-7654.
Comments we receive on agenda topics are shared with Council members and posted on our website at slc.gov. The first item on our agenda is an ordinance for the Sugar House Hotel Master Plan and Zoning Map Amendments at approximately 2111 south 1300 east. We're going to Brian Fulmer, Council Member Polisiano List and Kelsey Lindquist, Planning Manager, Agrona Jernesle, and Brian is going to give us a brief.
Thank you. We're also joined by Michaela Bell. This is a proposal to amend the future land use and zoning maps for the property you mentioned in Council District 7 from its current MU-3 or mixed use 3 zoning to 8 which is mixed use 8 and the intent is to construct a hotel on the property. The property is adjacent to Sugar House Park and is the site of a former Sizzler restaurant that you may be familiar with. The applicant is with us and would like to address the Council when it's their time and I will turn it over to Kelsey.
Thank you Brian and good afternoon Council. Next slide. So this is a zoning map and general plan amendment request from John Potter with Magnus Commercial Properties. The subject property is located at 2111 south 1300 east and is currently zoned MU-3 and the general plan future land use map indicates mixed use low intensity. The purpose of both amendments is to enable a hotel on the property. Next slide. The plan amendment would change the mixed use low intensity to business district mixed use town center scale and the zoning map would be amended from MU-3 to MU-8.
Planning Commission forwarded a positive recommendation for both petitions in October of 25. Next slide. Just as a reminder the factors of review include two different code sections 1906-07-0 and 21-A50-05-0. The considerations help review whether the requests are consistent with adopted plans and policies if they are compatible with adjacent properties and whether there are impacts of the request. Additionally the both code sections require proposed community benefits. Next slide. For background information the property that is now Sugar House Park just to be south and east of the subject property was the Utah State Prison from 1855 to 1951.
After the prison was moved in 1951 the 110 acres was converted to Sugar House Park. As far as the subject property and the development history the site was a scissor from 1964 to 2020. After it closed in 2020 there were two different development proposals including a multi-family building and a coming go. Next slide. These are just a few current images of the park and the subject property. Next slide. The Sugar House master plan adopted in 2001 and guides how land is used between 2300 east and 7th east from 17 south to 30th. The plan speaks to residential and commercial development and contains specific design guidelines for Sugar House business district.
The plan focuses on keeping Sugar House's historic charm while supporting growth that's compatible walkable and sustainable. The district includes two sub areas the town center and neighborhood scale both intend to support higher density mixed use patterns that keep the area active and vibrant. The plan guides how development should look here buildings close to the sidewalk pedestrian friendly design quality materials landscaping and active ground floor uses.
The city's updated mixed use zones already include the design standards ensuring new projects fit within the character of the area. Most of the remaining community outside of the business district is made up of well kept single family homes. There are many there aren't many vacant lots left this property is one of a few. Most new growth is expected to come from redevelopment in or nearby the business district. Next slide. The property sits right on the edge of the business district to the west zoning allows taller high density buildings wall to the north it transitions to lower intensity uses next to residential neighborhoods. This is also the only privately owned property on the east side of 13th east. The proposed rezone and plan amendment would not set the
precedent in Sugar House on the map you can see two other areas that were designated as low intensity mixed use but were recently rezoned to MU6 or MU8. According to the plan and existing development the business district still has room to reach its full potential. It was designed to create a more walkable community near transit lines and it's the preferred area for medium to high density housing and mixed use development. Next slide. The main differences within the rezone are the added height and the option for hotel use. The both are consistent with citywide plans for vibrant mixed use districts that support the daily needs of residents and a wider economic activity. Expanding the town center designation and amending the zoning aligns with
city goals for density near major corridors and supports a connected walkable sugar house. Next slide. Just for a quick comparison of the two districts the MU3 permits buildings up to 35 feet and the MU8 district permits up to 75 feet by right and 90 with design review. The MU8 district permits hotels and both districts have significant design standards.
Next slide. Next slide. The key considerations include implementation of city goals and policies, compatibility, community input and the proposed community benefits and the proposed community benefits are the primary considerations. Next slide. Staff found that the requests are generally in line with Plan Salt Lake and the Sugar House Plan. The specific chapters from Plan Salt Lake include growth, natural environment, beautiful city and economy and the Sugar House Plan is generally supportive of the amendment. As discussed earlier the town center scale is indicated to be near transit parks and the retail core. The plan does discuss expanding the business district if aligned with design standards. Next slide. Under the existing MU zoning, nearly all
properties along 2100 south could redevelop with taller buildings and higher intensity uses. Additionally, the aging suburban style shopping center east of Highland between 11th and 13th have been rezoned to MU11 which permits heights up to 150 feet. The subject property is currently MU3 which allows for development up to 40 feet, 35 by right. A rezoned to MU8 lines with the recent development patterns and development found in adjacent parts of the business district particularly across 1300 east in the MU11 zone. Across 2100 south to the north, the MU6 acts as the transition area between higher intensity mixed use zones and adjacent low density residential neighborhoods. Next slide. As far as community input, staff heard three main issues including
building height and views, environmental impacts and congestion and parking. Regarding building height and views, the current zoning which permits 35 feet and height 40 feet with design review would block the view of the mountains from 1300. Additionally, any redevelopment of the shopping center to the west would also block views. The property is located within the groundwater source protection overlay which has additional regulations. Public utilities will be closely involved in any sort of technical drainage study. Salt Lake County flood control and the state engineer will also be, review will also be required for the construction near the draw.
Additionally, the applicants did submit a traffic study which was reviewed by the transportation division. The study found that the hotel use would have minimal impact on surrounding roads and intersections. However, to minimize any potential impact to 1300 east, the transportation recommends directing outbound traffic to 2100 south. Next slide. As required by code, the applicant is providing five community benefits. They include the following 25% market rental rates, below market rental rates for a local business, interest-free tenant improvement financing up to 430,000. Free meeting room space for community use, 12 times a year once per month. Public use of underground parking and a new green bike station in Sugar House Park and that would be
subject to the approval of the Sugar House Park Authority. Next slide. A development agreement will be required for the amendments to detail and solidify the proposed community benefits. Planning staff and planning commission also recommend that the development agreement require 75% enhanced active ground floor use on the property. And the applicant is also requesting to include a proposed building gateway sign. These additional items were reviewed and recommended as part of the package from planning commission. Next slide. In conclusion, the planning commission afforded a positive recommendation.
Next slide. The applicant is in the audience this afternoon and I would be happy to answer any questions at this time. Thank you. I appreciate the overview and I'm just going to highlight a couple key points because I think that it's relevant to a lot of the feedback that I've been receiving. Can't speak for the other council members, but just want to highlight a couple pieces. First and foremost, this is private property. And so this isn't a question for the city to make a decision about selling off part of Sugar House Park. That is not what's happening here. It's very specific to an existing private property making a decision and asking for a rezone related to that component.
Is that accurate? Yes. Okay. Thank you. I think the second thing that I just want to make sure like we're all on the same page about is that when it comes to the development of this property,
to your knowledge Amanda, it's not changing. The property wouldn't be changing hands. It's an opportunity for the existing landowner to be able to lease it for this extended case. Is that right? That's correct. It would be a ground lease. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then as far as kind of the conversation with planning goes, I just have a few questions based on feedback that I've gotten from the community. So we talk about the fact that we've shifted to MU and that is pretty recent in terms of the history of planning decisions here in the city.
How would you respond, I guess, to feedback from the community that we haven't really seen that mixed use play out yet to be able to then start making decisions about making additional changes to zoning within, you know, eight months of that passing? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Good question. It is very early. We typically don't start seeing trends at least that we can respond to five years at the earliest, right? But it is the only district that would enable the type of development that the applicant is seeking. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. And then when it comes to the community benefit conversation, what we're looking at is what has been proposed at this point. But it still remains for city council to be able to kind of consider what types of benefits would be necessary to be able to consider this type of change. Is that accurate in the process? That's absolutely accurate. Okay. So I have a specific question about one of the community benefits and it may be better addressed by the applicants. Is it okay, Chair,
if I pivot that direction? Yes. Any other questions for staff? Okay. Yeah, let's do this. Let's invite the applicant and maybe you can direct those questions and then we can give them a little time. Thank you. Do you guys want to introduce yourself for the record?
I'm Jackson Ferguson with FKR Architects, architected record on the project. Now, John Potter, the applicant developer and future operator. We've got, would you want to start with your question or would you, okay, right? We'll give you five minutes. So, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate the chance to talk to you. Good afternoon, everybody. I'll start with a little more about us. You can mention I'm John Potter. I'm local here, lived here for 20 years. The be the developer, the longtime operator. If this comes to be local architects and other design people participating in it. I have a 20 year history, seven previous hotels and over 200 employees at those hotels in the, in all in the Wausat, the northern Wausat area. Next slide.
Yeah, next slide, please. Oh, sorry. And next slide too again. Thank you. I got ahead.
To start a little bit about our project, we're looking at 145 room upscale boutique hotel under the Hilton network. This is a hotel that is aesthetically and operationally defined by the neighborhood catering to modern travelers who are looking to experience the area that they're staying in when they go. They're looking for a neighborhood vibe whether they're traveling for business or work and sugar house area provides a great, great place to do that, right? So even though it's in the Hilton network, it is, we'll have its own branding identity and feel. Our mixed use development includes a rooftop restaurant, banquet hall retail and more that we'll touch on later. Next slide, please. We see this site as a, as a, as a very unique site with its proximity
to the park and, and we think it's a great opportunity to bring a number of amenities to the area, right? So, and it already touched on our custom design that'll permeate through all these amenities, right? So we see a rooftop restaurant which I touched on with great never to be interrupted views on the seventh floor, banquet space on that top floor too, great for weddings and other local events, lower meeting areas for community meetings and as well as businesses, lobby cafe, offering opportunity to buy gelato, coffee, et cetera, for those using the park as well as our guest.
An activity center too for various rentals of sporting equipment, frisbees, things that, of course, our guests might need to use the park but also open to locals as well. Retail spaces along the, along 13th and 21st providing activation and, and as we touched on in our community benefits, an opportunity to also introduce our guests to, to genuine local businesses, right?
There's a great synergy with us offering a local experience as a hotel as well as having them, those local business experience there that we're not looking for, for Starbucks, right? Green bike station, we're hoping for a partnership with them either on our property or in the park to provide access to all those trails that connect and we'll be providing underground parking as well to accommodate more than the car capacity needed for our project and finally a hotel's great as a 24-hour presence on the neighborhood as it's an always open business, always staffed.
What's really neat about our hotel use is that a hotel as close as a business can come to being a private business but with, with public benefit, right? The, if we were apartments, you'd have to pay a lot of money and rent to stay there or, or know somebody, if we were an office building, you'd have to sign a lease or, or visit our hotel use and all these amenities are, you can come visit and be our customer for the price of a cup of coffee.
Next slide, please. The, just a few words on, on our, on our, a few words on our, we see it consistent with the overall general plan. We think our hotel use supports adjacent sugar house businesses as far as our height request goes, our, our site location is some proximity, some distance from single family homes. We're asking for a lower height than the MU 11 zoning across the street and as this image here shows the, our building height is of similar heights to already existing buildings. Next slide, please. Again, to touch down, it was complementary used to the park in the business district as a bridge. Those hotel use, as was touched on earlier, is not possible with existing zoning. So all that hotel benefits are, can only be achieved through
the rezone and to address some possible concerns. We have this image here that shows,
the dark area here is what could be built under existing zoning. That's a 40 feet height. Our ghosted hotel on top shows our additional ask with MU 8 and we, we, I tried to identify the view impact to respond to some of that to neighborhood feedback and we hope this shows well. Next slide, please. So, yeah, in short, we see a good synergy and a good fit with this special lot, honestly. It's a very unique lot with the only privately owned place, east of 13th. We see a goal to connect that the park, one of the, one of the biggest parks in Salt Lake with the city, is touched on that zoning enables that hotel private business as a public hub. We see a local design and aesthetic to it, not, not cookie cutter process. Multiple amenities provided supporting.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, comes member. Thank you. And I do just want to say, I really have appreciated you both and the members of your team who are here in terms of coming and engaging with the community. It has been a long process. It has been a thoughtful process and I do really appreciate that you have, you know, approached it with a listening ear and that I have personally seen changes in the evolution over time. So, that, that is appreciated. What I'd like to do is kind of walk you through some of the existing community concerns that I think we still have questions about. And I understand that there will be some that you have answers for and there may be others where you're like, we're going to have to get back
to you on that one. So, either, either way works, but I want to just make sure that you have that opportunity to respond to some of the additional concerns that we're still hearing and that I'm still hearing is the representative for the area. So, I think first I'm going to go to the community benefits side of things. So, when we're looking at community benefits, there is a opportunity to be able to offer a reduced market rate rent. So, when we say that 25% off, how, can you speak a little bit about how that is calculated and what does that mean in terms of affordability? Because I hear often that the affordability of any business unit in Sugar House is just not reasonable. And so, whether or not that 25% would make a difference to a business, I'm just interested in your feedback.
That's a great question. You know, we took inspiration in crafting that from various things that we see on the housing side, right, sort of a reduced below market rate housing that we haven't seen applied to commercial, but we thought it seemed appropriate in this area where we all have a common goal of encouraging local business, helping them stay in an area that admittedly has seen a lot of turnover with higher rents. So, we looked at it with that again low income inspiration and in this case, targeting local and said we will, we can do a study. We already have preliminary to see what market rent is currently and come in about 25, at least 25% or more less than that.
I think our current math shows at about high 30s on the current, sorry, per square foot per year on the current market rent and around 28 or so, these are approximate numbers. We can submit formally later gives a conformance to this and helps a tenant, maybe the food truck operator looking to step up to brick and mortar or someone who doesn't have quite the ability to otherwise afford the rent to grow their business in the hotel. I would appreciate that additional information.
We will do it. It's helpful related to that benefit. The second component to it like ties in with the ability to do kind of the renovations and improvements and providing your credit for that. So, I'm going to kind of put those two together. Let's chat about parking though. So, parking as a benefit is that individuals who are either visiting or maybe visiting the surrounding areas would be able to pay to park in your lot. Is that what the proposal looks like?
Yes, that's correct. We intentionally size the garage to be noticeably in excess of the amount of parking spots that our third party parking study has concluded we need for our hotel and retail uses. We've done that at cost but with the idea of listening to the feedback of the locals that recognize that parking is a problem. We didn't just want to solve our own problem. We wanted to step above that to help. We can't claim to solve but to help the problem that already exists in the area.
And do you have like a general estimate of what that parking rate would look like? We don't have an exact reference. I'm happy to be open. Our basic performance does have it be, I want to say for a full day parking, so it's full day overnight, around $30 is our current estimate. It would obviously be less than that for, I'd say, a two-hour parking. Okay. So, I think one of the pieces of feedback that I've heard and at least that resonates with me is the concern about that being a community benefit in the context of which this proposal is being kind of pitched, which is that yes, parking is certainly an issue in Sugar House.
I don't know anyone who would tell you otherwise in terms of the businesses. And when it comes to the park, that being a community benefit is a challenge because there is free parking in the park. And so, being able to kind of say, does that have the same value of free parking that it would in the core of Sugar House versus knowing that individuals who are visiting the park could just park, you know, 30 feet away and be able to walk in, like, how does that translate? And that's not necessarily a question to be answered in this space, but it is something that I think I'm considering as a representative for the area is like, how does that in the context of where it's being proposed, translate to a true community benefit or not? And I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.
I can have a quick answer if that's all right. I mean, we look at it in a similar way to off-street parking, the $7 that I paid to park out front here for two hours for this meeting. It's not free, but it's still an amenity that it's an amenity for the space. And as far as the dollars in Cenco's, the cost of adding those additional spots far exceeds any day revenue from it is where we argue the benefit comes from. We'd save millions of dollars by shrinking the garage to our minimum size or even our minimum allowed by city code. And we've chose to go above that at great expense and bad admittedly ROI and calling it a benefit, right, and calling it providing that option.
Okay. Thank you for sharing. I think the parking is inherently challenging just based on the site. And so I understand and I'm just sharing this for the other council members as well, that in order to be able to create parking, you kind of have two options at any site, right? You can go down or you can go up. Going up was something that was considered in one of the earlier versions of this proposal in terms of that that would require the site to go to MU11.
And that wasn't something that the community could get behind in any way, shape or form. So the new solution is that we go down and that also creates some challenges historically related to the conversation about this property all the way back to when it was being considered for a gas station. And it's a question of risk related to the water table. And I think Amanda spoke to it as part of planning where it's like, okay, you can go down and I know you have an engineering study that says yes, that is possible. But I think one of the questions that I keep hearing is one of risk where it's like just because you can doesn't mean you can without risk. And how are we balancing those pieces out? So when we talk about the parking, how many spots is it currently with the in the
current proposal? It's 185 spots that includes some valet parking predominantly for the hotel guests of a stacker configuration. And I appreciate what you said about the going deeper for height concerns is it ties to the cost impacts that I mentioned earlier why it's not a profitable venture to just do parking on that site because of the digging and excavation. To the valid local concern about is there an impact on water and flooding and whatnot. And we've provided we have addendums to our proposal here. We could queue up if you wanted to see but they're also on the record for later review by everybody. We've some documentation from our engineers showing how far away from the floodplain from Parley's Creek we are. We have documentation provided as you alluded to and I
know you've reviewed it showing the water table. I had a con in preparation of this meeting. I had a conversation with our general contractor today actually who's also doing the Highland High School rebuild nearby very trusted reputable group and and our average excavation deep is 33 feet with a few places deeper and our water table is at 51 feet the static water table. So we're outside of the floodplain we're above the water table and we're behind and out of impact from any earthen dam or overflowing concerns as specified by the county engineer and the flood the state flood team.
Thank you. I think the the last piece that I'll end with because I know I've taken more than my fair share of type and so thank you chair I appreciate the flexibility. I think is kind of a larger question that was touched upon in planning commission and again just want to raise it for the other council members here when we're looking at increasing density here within the city one of the things that has been a huge driver and something that I've been passionate about as I know others on the council have is that we really want to look at it in terms of affordability. This project being a hotel doesn't necessarily tackle that affordability component. That's not to say that every project across the city has to have that aspect but it was a question that I at least you know was
considering in the planning commission component when they were looking at alignment of plans and trying to figure out how that use case like fits within that structure in that area. Again I appreciate that you guys have done quite a bit to be able to try and find middle ground where possible. We're also looking at the dollars and cents and appreciate the opportunity to ask the questions of the community. I know there's more coming related to our public comment process and look forward to continuing to dialogue about some of those pieces as we weigh the pros and cons.
Yes, members. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. I you know I certainly I I share many of those concerns you know or questions you share especially the framing of a community benefit. And you know I still need to like dig in a little bit more maybe I need to understand a little bit how how that plays out. It's not only in in in when we are asked to rezone a property.
We define very clearly what the benefit is to the community. And you know I do struggle about this. Let me ask you you said that there is going to be 145 rooms. Correct. Yes. How many parking spots again? 185. 185. And how many employees you you said 75 jobs or something but how many you anticipate in a given time. At a given time 75 is the total amount at a given time at a peak time and I'll clarify why I say that let's call it 15 to 20 would be approximate. And then if I may I would highlight the uniqueness about the business model of of all hotels not just ours is the not quite inverse but the the mixed timing of when employees work at the hotel relative to when guests are there. It creates a very efficient use of of parking swaps right our our peak employee time is
let's say housekeeping and those the day jobs the admin positions that are done in regular business hours which are inverse to when our guests are usually at the hotel at 10 a.m. we're cleaning rooms guests are at business meetings. Yeah and then the other to a business on the bottom you know this we're not talking about a significant amount of parking spots generally I mean it's probably you might have an equation for that maybe maybe I would be great to know what that equation is but you know if it's a restaurant or something along those lines or something you know you mentioned a foot truck moving up to brick and mortar so talking about a restaurant talking about potentially dozens of people coming in by vehicle on top of your employees on top of your guests
or whatever guests there are at that given time you know we're not talking unnecessarily about a a significant amount of parking spots that you know are really available and I also the I struggle again we probably should be talking a little more offline about this community benefit and how is defined better again struggle with the concept of you know the the cost of it as well the you know and certainly the environmental issues we went through a lot back and forth in the past to to ensure that the the water table on the park was safe considering certainly this option and that you know it was very well put when you have a gas station or your project certainly there's you know one project that is superior than the other one
but I still have environmental concerns about about this project and I would like to to answer those and for the for the peace of mind and when you're talking about like the height of the building it seems like the once minster building across the street is about two stories shorter I mean you know I was just looking at the photo that you posted it is the ningle interesting angle shows us that are very similar but they aren't right this is a significant I mean that's your rendering shows it to be two stories taller is that correct exactly that building is a little shorter the Redmond building nearby is of similar height though it is but yes that one is a little shorter in the corner okay yeah and certainly the you know height generally is not one of my
concerns but for the purpose of where we are here negotiating I want to highlight that you know this is where we get the chance to to to negotiate community benefits and understand that we will like answer some of those questions so I really appreciate your time thank you any other questions okay would it help if we put some of that information together as a supplemental information packet to the council yeah some of those questions I think council staff will reach out to you to return to you to answer some of those questions and maybe we can say I love it I love the bill and thank you fantastic thank you thank you for your time we're gonna move on on the agenda thank you everyone item number two is an ordinance for a master plan and zoning map map amendment at
approximately five two seven five three seven and five three nine south four hundred east joining us at the table will be Austin Kimmel council policy analyst and Olivia Quetco principal planner thanks council members like you mentioned this is a briefing on a proposal to amend the central community master plan future land use map from medium high density residential to high density mixed use and to rezone three properties located at 527 537 and 539 south 400 east from RMF 45 to MU5 the petitioner proposes to to demolish three existing single family homes and to construct a mixed use apartment building with ground floor commercial space this project is intended to complement the adjacent six story apartment building to the north
which is under the same ownership the proposed ordinance requires the petitioner to enter into a development agreement with Salt Lake City that includes three specific conditions first all three demolished dwelling units on the property must be replaced with at least three two bedroom units a second a minimum of 1100 square feet of commercial space must be provided on the ground floor and third tenants to place from the demolition of existing residential units must be provided with tenant relocation assistance the planning commission but voted to forward a positive recommendation during its excuse me December 10th meeting and further details will be provided by Olivia from the planning division thank you good afternoon as mentioned this is a request for a general plan
amendment anasoning map amendment for a project that will be known as the citizen two at about 537 south and 400 east you can do next slide for me thank you okay so more details about this request there is a general plan amendment associated with this to amend the central community master plan map for the subject properties from medium high density residential to high density mixed use and an associated zoning map amendment to amend those same properties from RMS 45 to MU5 specific development plans have not been submitted at this time the applicant is proposing to do a five-story mixed use development with studio one bedroom and two bedroom units and ground floor commercial facing of 400 east next slide so the central community plan was adopted in 2005
I have the subject properties outlined here in blue the existing land use category calls for about 30 to 50 units per acre and up to four stories in height and residential uses only the requested land use category offers a little bit of flexibility permitting ground floor retail and commercial uses that would not be permitted under the medium high density residential it also increases the maximum density allowed on the property and does not specify a height next slide
similarly here are here's a little breakdown of the RMS 45 code and the proposed MU5 so this is you know what's permitted today on the lot versus what would be permitted if these if the zoning map and master plan amendment were approved so the RMS 45 allows 45 feet of height and requires 750 square feet per unit with a maximum of 20 units per building form under this code the applicant could accommodate roughly 29 units across two buildings by right
under the proposed MU5 this is a mixed use district so it does not designate a maximum density rather it just limits the building form itself so we would get a 10-foot height increase for a maximum height of 55 feet the side the setbacks change a little bit and there is no cap on the density next slide please I pulled this picture in I think it's a good visualization of the height in the area the building that is under construction in this picture is now completed it's the citizen one and you can see the condo properties directly across the street those are five stories high which is what this property is requesting the properties just to the south are two stories high
and next slide okay so the the plan amendment and the zoning amendment both require the applicant to propose a community benefit the community benefit that the applicant has proposed is adding some commercial space on the ground floor they have proposed 1,100 square feet which is roughly half of the ground floor facade along 400 east and I pulled in this map from our walkable SLC project to show that there is a gap right here of retail restaurant type uses in the area commercial uses so this is their community benefit they're proposing and if you'll go to the next slide I can talk a little bit about the tenant displacement which is also required if a general plan and zoning map amendment is likely to demolish existing housing so this picture here shows the three single family
homes and two of them are I believe two of them are occupied one of them is boarded up so the applicant would be required to replace all three of these units with
within their new development these are each two bedroom unit or two bedroom homes so the applicant would be providing three two bedroom units within their new development to replace that
and the full required assistance for those tenants that have the potential to be displaced from the two occupied homes next slide on December 10th the planning commission did vote to forward a positive recommendation for both the general plan amendment and the zoning map amendment with the identified community benefit and tenant displacement and unit replacement plan next slide and I believe that is all I have and the applicant is here today as well Council members any questions? Okay go ahead and this might be a question actually to the applicant as well but I just had questions how many units they were planning in the pro form I know I'd met with them previously they were planning a lot of studios so I was just curious what that unit breakup would look like I have not received
unit breakdown yeah do we know on citizens one how many studios are in there oh that was a good question and I don't know that would be best directed towards the applicant yeah thank you I'd be curious if they want to answer is the applicant here yes yes come on here we'll have five minutes two percent there's two spots we can make two spots available we can give you five minutes unless you want to ask this question ahead of time because one below the showers no push it yeah my name is Steve Broadbent I'm with Thrive Development unfortunately Russ Polson is sick today so I am filling in for him so I will do my best to answer your questions and then my name is Scott Alder I am with the development team as well we own the property
for the citizen one directly to the north since 2000 with legal defenders runs in there and then when they moved out transition to the apartments and then we're also part of the development team on the citizen too you speak to the microphone closer to the microphone sorry sorry about that
do you want to answer the question from Council Member Lopez Chavez yeah my question was just the unit breakdown citizens too but it sounds like if you don't have that could you help me understand citizens one because I know when we previously met we had discussed the studio concentrations for your project and and just wanted to break that up since we are wanting more family sized housing in this area yeah so the number of units will depend on the unit mix obviously the bigger units will take more space the unit mix is not finalized yet we're working on market studies but it's a combination of two one and studio units and it would be some number over 100 units right now just just over 100 sure on citizens one will you remind me what the unit allocation is
yeah I'll pull that up for you some of the feedback that we got during going to the community council and whatnot was that they didn't want as many studios and so we were taking that back out and doing a market study and trying to see what the market really wants I will tell you that the things that we have rented at the citizen were the first things that go are there studios in the two bedrooms the one bedrooms have been the most difficult for us yeah I'd be curious to see because I know in district four the vacancies went up significantly for studios specifically a new mark study showed that by the end of quarter four in 2025 it was about 17% vacancy so I know that's something we discussed prior but just wanted to raise that still as a community
concern and then I wanted to understand where right now you're parking on citizens one the egress point is Denver Street Denver is very small it's I wouldn't say it's pedestrian safe nor is it really a great place for vehicular access will they be sharing lots are you building a separate lot for the hundred units on citizens too can you explain your transportation needs there too yeah so citizen one looks like we can confirm these numbers but approximately 20% of the units are studio so 264 units total and 55ish studio units and then regarding the parking citizen one would be utilizing the same parking structure okay how many parking stalls is that total do you know so we oversized the parking if I remember right it's 284 stalls okay so it's more stalls than we
needed anticipating we had already acquired some of this land and so we were anticipating future phases got it okay that's really helpful for me I'd love to understand what we look what does that look like for if there was a transportation analysis just to help uh decongest Denver Street I've walked it since it's a byway to smith's and it's really it's been unsafe is what I'll say but we just want to create healthy livable conditions for future renters and I think I'd love to see as close as we can get to family size housing in that breakdown I think we see studios in this area and that's great if you're having good stabilization and Lisa I'm happy to hear that I'd love to just understand what the retention of those units are also because I think what we're seeing is
studios are affordable but then we don't have good retention right now and I think that's something that the community sees as a benefit if we're gonna rezone and really consolidate the unit supply mix here then making sure that that density is actually contributing to anchoring neighbors long term would be awesome any other questions consumers yes go ahead just kind of uh pig back in on the last question about the four billion side house are there any uh four billion units 80% am I over lower or mixed mixed income housing on this
uh just the units that we're replacing just you just see the three units you replace yeah will be 80% am I lower uh I think it's a different formula and maybe you know a better than I do but it's I think it's based on the current rent okay it's based on the current but just replacing those four billion those three units the rest of it would be all market rate right and no for sale all just for rent correct at least okay and then there's no I was curious for staff is there a way in the agreement to give the first option to leasing to the current tenants is that something that we've done before at all only one of the units are currently as a tenant got it just as a side I was just curious yeah something that we get the options we don't often contribute that way but I was just curious
if that's something that was possible the timing will be also kind of for sure yeah um since the building will come down the other one will help to rebuild council member uh very good um I wanted to follow up on council member Lopez Chavez's questions about parking as I understand this uh proposed citizen two is a is a hundred unit building it sounds like the unit mix is yet to be determined sounds like you've got 284 spots in citizen one how many of those spots are currently occupied we currently have well it's not completely full right now but what we're finding is it's about seven stalls per unit is right where the demand seems to be shaking out based on the current occupancy okay so I guess what I'm trying to get at is given you know the car dependency of our city
even though we want to promote walkability will there be enough parking for people to be able to park in the shared parking option and given that the current building is using the parking as well how are you thinking about that possible overflow and what that might look like in terms of impact to the neighborhood and street parking yeah so we have more than one stall per unit on the current building um we have about 20 more stalls in fact and we will fingers cross leasing continues at a decent pace we should know at full occupancy exactly how many stalls we're using here soon but assuming that it continues at the same rate it is right now we would have ample parking for both projects I think building on both of yours I would like to know currently on citizen what are the fee
scheduled for for tenants you know it's parking in a minute that people have to pay for and what other fees you require you know they're not built into your rent and what fees are optional that to me is important to understand how your business model occurs a little bit from the perspective of a renter ultimately I want to make sure that if I vote to personally vote for an up zone that I'm being fair to the community as a whole unfortunately I've seen very bad cases of hidden fees everywhere mandatory fees to to renters and if you have a fee associated to your parking unfortunately many people might choose not to pay for that and pay in the streets and I would like to know how that breaks down so if you are willing you know that will be a very
important piece for me to understand how I feel about the the absence of the moment so okay any other questions okay thank you thank you for your time I appreciate it yeah thank you guys
moving on to a number items number three in ordinance for the recurring nuisance properties this is a follow-up briefing we're gonna have Michael Saunders council policy analyst giving us a brief description may be at Thompson maybe chief financial officer is involved in this project Arturo Garcia director of finance operations Bill Manzanares deputy chief for police in Catherine Pasker senior city attorney Michael is your time okay thank you council so just as a reminder in September of 2025 the council was briefed on a proposal from the administration which would have prohibited alcohol consumption in common areas all commercial and non-residential properties between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. and introduced an administrative process to
both declare a nuisance and force on them today the proposal has been updated and solely contains the administrative process to declare and enforce on nuisances the alcohol consumption provision has been removed the staff report has been updated from the September 9th 2025 briefing with new information in blue with that I'll turn it over to the administration for their presentation and for your questions thank you Michael thank you council members and appreciate your time
what we're asking today is to adopt the responsible owner owner ordinance establishing a clear administrator process for chronic nuisance businesses and I'll be covering just the what we're trying to solve with this ordinance and then the administrator process for that we can move to the next slide please so this ordinance the problem that we're trying to solve this ordinance addresses properties that generate repeated calls ongoing disturbances unsafe conditions because the court based nuisance cases are slow and resource intensive the city needs a clear consistent process with measurable standards to intervene sooner before the problem escalates and or worsens thereby placing a burden on residents and businesses
and the public safety as well so this ordinance delivers earlier flexible intervention with a timely administrative action to prevent escalation and reduce calls of service and stabilize hotspots throughout the city fairness and accountability so clears standards
and correction first process that holds owners responsible when problems persist and resource relief and outcome address as repeated locations reduces ongoing enforcement burdens and supports safer commerce on and neighborhoods so this is a simple tiered administration process
the ordinance clearly defines when a business is presumed to be creating a nuisance whether it's repeated incidents ongoing violations however it gives the the property or the business the opportunity to address the issue before it escalates and if the issue persists the city sends out a notice and an abatement plan that lists the issues explains what must be fixed and by when and then it includes the right to appeal as well if we don't see any improvement and the problems still aren't corrected the city may impose the fines and eventually suspend or revoke the business but I want to emphasize that throughout the process there is the administrative appeals process and that follows the t-75 process where they're able to speak with the hearing officer
and if they disagree with the determination that can appeal it within a administrative appeals officer can I ask the question for you? Yeah, go ahead, Consul. Yeah, are the words incident violation and nuisance calls being used interchangeably here or is there a separate definition for each of those things? There's a separate definition for those cases so
we're a nuisance what we're currently seeing is a property that's currently having through more incidents or ongoing violations with the city whether that's a police responding to a location whether there's a great example that I gave in the transmittal would be
whether just call for services for nuisance that's whether responding to a drug related activity in that in front of the property or it's public drinking or harassment by passengers sorry thank you and so that refuses over on the business to address and hit those issues then that's when we would like to step in and see if we can correct some of those problems.
So this just gives you more flexibility to identify what is actually a nuisance versus what is not they just they seem like really different thresholds to me like three incidents in six months versus an ongoing for 30 days those feel like a very different intensity to me and so I rest but this this is just giving you all the tools you need correct to be more expansive. Yeah and so the it is a collaboration between multiple departments where the business license will be actually reviewing the reports and they'll be determining whether to dismiss that call whether it's a one instance or it's a constant problem. So we're not saying that someone has to wait 30 solid days or have an aggregate of three and six months by the time we get to the third day that
feels like three and six months like it is a lot faster than the current process the current judicial process that you know it's currently taking over a year and maybe that can.
Yeah thank you Councilmember for the question. Catherine Pasker, senior city attorney. That's one piece of clarification that we did want to update the ordinance which is clarifying what violations I mean this concept is already in the ordinance like we mentioned those ongoing condition types of violations and we wanted to be more clear about what specific things we're talking about in that situation it's the litter it's the outdoor storage it's the you know stuff that can sit it's not it's the dumping it's the idle construction where you know hey you give someone a note warning letter give them a little time to take care of it themselves we don't want to have to wait for 30 days if there's a serious violent incident and we just want to be
clear with people some things you know the city is going to give you time to deal with and some things maybe it isn't as appropriate to give you a lot of time to deal with it.
And I just have one more slide if we can move to the last slide. You okay waiting? Yeah go ahead.
So the safeguards to prevent overuse so objective triggers again the city will only act when there's documented patterns and this would be by business license they'll be tracking that process so not just a single complaint and then define nuisance standards we'll talk about it a little bit and then the chance to fix remedial measures right where they'll get the notice like Catherine said to address that issue if not then we'll proceed with the next steps. Complain and take standards so complaints must include time location and non-verified contact plus evidence
consistency controls again only confirm events whether police reports or civil enforcement reports that will be used towards the threshold duplicate and non-verbal claims will not count and then substantiation rule so upon passage of the ordinance the administration will sit standard decision guide staff training centralized tracking to help ensure that the scene rules apply to everywhere and that's all I have any any questions because I'm a warden are you ready for customer award yes thank you so this I just wanted to double check because in the second slide it says a property slash business so this doesn't apply to residential right it does not apply to residential it does it does oh it does apply okay okay so could it be
okay what if somebody just has like a really messy divorce and they're calling the book they've called the police like three times in you know a one month period could they be designated a nuisance property so we have very specific standards right for what constitutes a nuisance and you know if it's more of those continuing did you give a specific example councilor side now let's just say they're calling the police on each other because they're fighting and are you know and I guess it could you know if it was loud enough maybe other people call but I just want to make sure that we're not
you know accidentally including things that maybe we don't want to include sure yeah when noise is not included in the types of violations that's handled and enforced in a different manner but it would have to fall into a specific you know category of nuisance and then for those things that are ongoing I mean they every property owner would have an opportunity to cure and even if you know it wasn't cured within the amount of time that you needed to the city has the abatement plan option where you know if it's stuffing stored outside if it's I can't think of another you know yes I mean I there's not a lot of great you know residential you know problem things that would be happening if it's police calls you there would still be that abatement plan option and you know
that could look like a lot of different solutions okay can we get a list of of maybe like what what are the defined nuisances because that would be good I think to know because my assumption was that noise would be on there but if it's not that's probably good thing for my example but I just want to know what the other ones are how did I do that and then my second question is there are there are other cities that use an administrative process for nuisances in Utah or would be the first
yes so West Valley City uses it for their abatement of you know outdoor storage issues so we've seen administrative processes are pretty standard as a way to kind of deal with these issues I think it's more inventive to deal with on a property side but South Lake also he utilizes an administrative process as well okay
that's what we're doing yeah thank you thank you for the part about the residential because that was my question so I'm just now it says I'm just trying to figure out the the city may pursue business license suspension revocation but you have a rental property and how does that
license revocation solve the issue of someone renting the house it was causing a problem so I'm just trying to figure out how that this define works and on the residential side not so much the
the fast food restaurant or the 7-11 type corner store
well we're trying to the hope with this ordinance is that we're going to notify the property owner so there were and they can address the issue before it escalates so we're hoping to intervene with a little bit sooner prior than one to be it escalates so a lot of the times maybe the property owners are not aware of the ongoing issue like we've seen with the loud parties when we notify them they actually address the issue with the tenant so that's what I hope to do
right thanks
thank you for the clarification that this would intersect with residential properties can you help me understand because as I was understanding it would primarily be for commercial properties is that right this is that is the primary genesis yes okay and given the that this does apply to residential properties help me understand how this interacts with our existing ordinances as it relates to vacant and boarded buildings and the ways in which those are often areas of nuisance for a neighborhood as well
as I represent civil enforcement so I'm not a little bit but I will have my colleagues speak in if they so wish but what's envisioned is for this to only cover a very narrow band of what would happen on a residential property the remedies would give the city the ability to enter into those abatement plans pursuing abatement in a much more efficient way than is currently happening but with respect to the boarded buildings and specifically I mean that's a registration process that happens right now for civil enforcement to monitor make sure they're being secured make sure that boarding is staying in place but and you know we would still receive complaints about nuisances happening at that property but given that it's you know there's no one there we would
envision the remedies being a more of a more kind of tailored nature to that use right maybe it's you need to install some fencing around your property to deal with that you know litter is accumulating here maybe you know a dumpster or a trash can needs to be installed to deal with that litter in that location maybe some of some of the activity is happening you know around the back maybe a security camera or some lighting might be appropriate here to try to deter that kind of activity.
Any other michael? Yeah just to address the question regarding the the list of what a nuisance conduct could possibly be just inside of the transmittal paperwork and the administrative draft on lines 48 through 85 there's a substantial list that includes nuisance contact got nuisance conduct it is including but not limited to that list and just to address your question on the noise subsection P addresses the noise fouling of the air with offensive odors or contaminates this stuff is excessive dust or excessive loud noise what was that?
nets odorous materials and excessive loud noise okay thanks any other thoughts?
okay I want to acknowledge the you know the significant progress we made in this and this draft ordinance and and there are specific cases in some of our districts where there are some businesses that are creating and knowing so creating nuisance and since we don't not caring about the impact they have in our community they can think several of them unfortunately and in North Temple and other areas of our city so I'm hoping that this speeds up the process and solves many of the issues we have seen and the amount of resources we have to invest on trying to mitigate the impact so I appreciate the administration working with us and the concerns from the community as a whole too so that concludes this item so thank you so much
thank you we're going to go to an informational now item number four is an informational
item for expanding housing options zoning tax amendment update we're going to have Michael Sander state at the table whose our council policy analyst we're going to invite planning staff Ben Buckley principal planning planner and in Hoka senior planner and Nick Norris I'm sure is somewhere in the building working on something else so okay great thanks so on March 4th of 2025 the council approved a legislative action which requested the administration to consider consolidating and simplifying the r1 single family residential districts including updates to residential flaglot standards new housing options and to also consider similar changes in other low density districts the council requested that the city's housing
walkability and water conservation goals also be considered the full legislative action is also found in attachment a of the staff report the administration has responded to this legislative action with their proposal today called expanding housing options this proposal includes a new permitted use for the r12 and sr1 and sr1 a zones called a small lot dwelling additionally the proposal consolidates the residential zones into tables and includes modifications to various developmental standards including including changes to building height setbacks lot width and building coverage flaglot standards have also been updated just as a note this proposal is informational only right now that it has not yet received a planning commission recommendation and there are
several tabling and open housing and open houses scheduled to gather more community feedback today the planning division is looking for feedback on the proposal from the council and with that I'll pass it to the planning division awesome thanks for having us my name is Ben with me is Andy and John we're going to try to be really quick with this but please feel free to jump in at any time next slide please what is expanding housing options as you know city council initiated these changes this proposal to try to attempt to ease the housing shortage the primary goal is to enable infill housing that is in scale with the existing neighborhood as well as being attainable whether that's either for sale or for rent and it would impact those zones that michael listed off r1 r2
sr1 and sr1 a zones and that's 36 percent of all land in salt lake city and 77 percent of all residential land next slide please this is the map of the identified properties you can see it takes up a pretty large swath of the residential areas in a pretty large chunk of kind of the core salt lake city next slide please all righty so just to give you a couple highlights of the key components of this project first it would create new zoning regulations for certain types of buildings including smaller single-family dwellings duplexes triplexes four plexes in town homes up to four units it would also make some changes to the existing base zones those r1 r2 sr1 and sr1 a zoning districts including some changes to things like setbacks
height and lot coverage and also changes to flag lots few things the proposal does not do we're not proposing to eliminate single-family zoning this would not prohibit construction of new large single-family homes it would not require all new construction to follow the new small standards it wouldn't make any changes to the historic districts and would not rezone any properties in the city next slide please why are we proposing this i'm not going to go through all of this but housing is extremely expensive in salt lake city six hundred fifteen thousand dollars is the median home cost 72 percent of of salt lake city households cannot afford that these days and so we're just trying to trip we're we don't think we're going to solve that completely but if we can lower that
to 50 percent that's great next slide please thank you shrinking homeowner to back one yes perfect thank you we have a lot of shrinking home ownership home ownership opportunities in the city as well only 43.5 percent of the city is home ownership the state is 69 percent 86.4 percent of renters are priced out of home ownership which is a extremely large portion next slide please
we also have significantly fewer children in the city since 2000 salt lake city has gained over 36,000 total residents but has lost nearly 10,000 children from its population and so we're trying to encourage more housing to bring back families to the to the city next slide please
lastly kimcy gardener found that condos townhomes and twin homes can cost up to 150,000 dollars less than that of a single family home in the state of utah and then durham north carolina who we were we've gotten a lot of this from they found that small lot dwellings were 250,000 dollars less than their average small standard single family home and then portland found that up to 300,000 dollars less their median missing middle housing was then a single detached home next slide so based on that data those findings we found that the most important strategies are to allow more housing new types of housing missing middle types of housing and housing on smaller lot sizes so based on that research this proposal would would set up a new set of standards for a
new land use designation what we're calling small lot dwellings think of this like an ADU it's a different type of building that has its own rules in the zoning code so this would be a new set of rules for new smaller dwellings under these this provision some of the key proponent components that would be allowed are new building types as mentioned up to a fourplex or townhomes smaller lot sizes required per unit but in order to be considered a small lot dwelling the new buildings would need to meet size limitations on the footprint and the floor area that's allowed to be built also proposing a requirement of one parking space per unit for these new units next slide please we've had a few questions come up on the difference between footprint and
gross floor area won't go in detail on this but the footprint is just the space the building takes on the land you can see that area highlighted in yellow on the left image but then on the right you can see the floor area would include not only the footprint but also the amount of space on each level in the home next slide we won't go through we've got all of the charts and tables if you have specific questions about any of the height or setbacks or any of the standards proposed please let us know overall we are proposing that all of the new standards be in a table so it's easy to read and largely that the small lot dwellings would be similar standards to what's allowed in base zone
here are the r1 amendments these would apply to r1 are the all three r1 zones i'm not going to go through them all but most notably there's a there's a small increase in building height just to kind of align with surrounding municipalities as well as getting a functional two-story building if you're going with a flat roof we're standardizing can you go back one slide please thank you we're standardizing side yards and front yards across the zones we're increasing the building coverage and then notably it's not on this this table but we are removing the lot width we think that there are enough guardrails in place to kind of self-regulate there next slide same thing with r2 that their changes are very similar to the r1 we are removing a quirky little footnote that is in the r2
district that limits how many duplexes that could potentially be built on a block face we think it's impractical for our zone that should allow for duplexes to actually turn around and limit them in a way next slide then the last base zones that are being amended are the sr1 and sr1 a zones these are the special residential districts most common in the avenues and capital hill areas again similar proposed changes are listed notably the sr1 a district is it has a shorter maximum building height than the other zones that are being considered and so this proposal would increase the height slightly there in those zones but at the same rate as what's proposed elsewhere next slide please
we are also modifying the flaglot standards right now flaglots are conditional use that's a additional three to six three to six months of a process that you're going to have to go through we're proposing to make it just a permitted use to ease that we're also removing some or modifying some standards like lot size and driveway width and then right now flaglots are only permitted for single family dwellings they would still be permitted for single family dwellings but we would also allow for small lot dwellings up to the four units as long as they have have the lot size and such next slide please we've had questions come up about the difference between this proposal and what's allowed under the affordable housing incentives that you recently passed again for
time's sake i won't go through each bullet point but generally speaking both sections of the code allow builders to build up to a fourplex or town homes the key difference between the two is that under affordable housing incentives the affordability is regulated by restricting the price either the rental or sale price of the unit the expanding housing options proposal aims at affordability by limiting the unit size instead of the price the idea is that a smaller lots on smaller or smaller homes on smaller lots are inherently cheaper more affordable to residents next slide please
we've also had a couple questions about the utah first time home buyer program it's hard to predict what these would actually sell for that program does require the home be four hundred fifty thousand dollars or less going back to the data from other cities that we've seen and kimcee gardeners research we do think that most of these homes would qualify but again it's hard to to confirm that next slide please another question that's come up in this discussion is water conservation it is our goal that this project will implement some of the strategies that are in plant salt lake plant salt lake recently adopted water conservation chapter which recommends a policy of reducing lot sizes to reduce per capita water consumption
also have research showing that smaller lots and smaller setbacks can lead to more efficient water use interestingly some research from the state shows that about 95 percent of indoor water ends up returning to the great salt lake whereas only about 20 percent of outdoor water ends up returning to the lake and so changes that allow housing to be built where it was typically or previously yard space is another strategy to help make sure that the water we're using does end up back in the great salt lake thank you next slide we've also had questions about how this proposal kind of furthers our housing goals plant salt lake and housing slc both have various goals about more housing options whether that's duplexes or triplexes different incomes things like that
this project is geared towards furthering those significantly by allowing people to choose what kind of house they live in what neighborhood that is in and how they can how much they can afford next slide the last major city goal that we were asked to touch on is walkability walkable slc project the planning division recently completed evaluates all of the housing units in the city for proximity to amenities that shows that most of the neighborhoods in salt lake city are actually fairly walkable and when compared to the suburbs especially salt lake city neighborhoods are much more walkable and so any effort that allows additional infill density in salt lake cities neighborhoods is going to be providing more options in walkable
neighborhoods this proposal also does limit them that has a smaller number of minimum parking spaces required per unit which is another strategy aimed at promoting walkability next slide please we've recently kicked off this project back in early to mid-January and we've just started our public engagement events we were we were tabled at the opening ceremonies watch party which was a great time over the weekend we were at district ones your city loves you event thank you for having us we had a great time and then we have a handful of upcoming events including our public open houses we're kicking off next week at highland high school we have one in mid-March at the serencen unity center and then at the end of march we'll have one
this this slideshow does say at the lianardo but after i submitted the slideshow we went over there and took a look at the lianardo and just doesn't work for for the purposes so it will actually be be at the library instead next slide please public engagement our new website done by our graphic was brian he crushed it the website has been getting a lot of good feedback you can submit comments there and things like that we also have an email should anybody feel like they want to email us next slide please and as always have for you we're happy to take any questions that you may have consumer councilman we're doing thank you appreciate that you know you talked about the no rezoning so i have a r1 7000 makes this make numbers even it's 6 000 square feet
i can just buy right now just put that up into three small lot zone small lot properties and sell each one off individually and then they that rezone but that they own that 2000 square foot property and they can build on it i mean of course they would sell it so that they can actually build on it and do something but that's that that would be viable uh option that's how this could go you're not rezoning it you're just dividing it up into three spots selling them individually and then they can do what they want as far as within the the requirements correct if as long as they build under the small lot dwelling code wait yeah with all this yeah all those assumptions are made decides and everything else okay just i just wanted to confirm that was the understanding i thought
okay appreciate that comes on my car some um i have a couple questions but first want to double down on what you said about the website i've received some good feedback from community members about the clarity of that website the accessibility the f aq's and so thank you to everybody who is involved in putting forward that website i found it very helpful myself too um a couple questions that you know i've heard from community members and um i've had a chance to talk through with you but i'm racing here again for um for the public space is just that you know we have seen housing you know nationally be a place where private investors are buying up you know single family housing stock for all sorts of reasons and so my question is like
given the potential for these small lot dwellings more units on the same amount of land how do we how can we ensure that developers don't use this to their advantage and buy up you know what formerly were single family homes and then redevelop that same property into multiple units and don't actually promote the affordability and the home ownership that we'd like to see
couple of things to consider with that um obviously preserving the existing housing stock was a goal of this and so one of the elements that's been included in the proposal is an incentive or bonus to retain existing buildings also key to the proposal is the limit on the gross floor area of each of the new units as we explained before the intent there is to promote promote relative affordability or attainability because of those limits we feel that in some of the study that we've done it will be less likely that developers will buy and tear down buildings just to rebuild new units because they can't because they are inherently going to be in that more affordable price range there's less of a profit to be made um is there anything else i'm
forgetting on that the other thing is the enforcement of of keeping out
checking who's buying homes that requires a lot of manpower and employee and staff time um so i'm not terribly sure how we would go about that um but that would be a significant lift yeah i mean i certainly think we all recognize that as an issue potentially right um but the way to do that would have to be force everything through like a some sort of deed restriction which we would have to police at the beginning but then also the middle and the end they're not only like 30 year agreements so we would have to have city staff to view annual reviews that were tracking them and looking into that too so um i i don't want to say that we're going to completely reject the idea but we just wouldn't want to counsel and people to be aware of what maybe some of the
potential negative issues might be some council members because more warden yeah um i appreciate the the Venn diagram with the affordable housing incentives but i i guess i kind of would like to see i don't know if there's another circle to add to it but the changes that we made to ADUs as well um because that seems like it's overlapping a lot with the small home
um piece um or this small lot dwelling piece um overall though i also worry that that um if we might be moving a little quickly on this in addition to all of the changes that we made in the last year or so that we haven't really seen come to fruition yet um affordable housing overlay the rms the um the mus and when i when we made this straw poll and when we were talking about this it was a very different scenario because we were talking about i remember how this came up it was about a flaglot and we were i think putting a lot of uh this particular flaglot became emblematic of these kind of bigger frustrations that that we had um as council members at the time but um and i am appreciative of the changes this this makes to flaglots um but then i think
since that time you know we've had a lot of other changes that in my mind have addressed a lot of the things that were coming up in the flaglot in that particular flaglot discussion so i would like to know i would like more time and i would like to see kind of how these changes are shaping up um and um i know that some of the 80s that i've seen um that have been developed in my district seem like pretty substantial um units and i i want to see if those are helping or hurting and we put a lot of money into a fort or two making 80s more affordable as well so that's where i'm at um i would feel comfortable going forward on the flaglots but on the other issues uh i kind of want to wait and see and give it a couple years that's where i'm at
because i want to be true so apparently we're just taking our 80U positions up because i'm going to represent the other side of the spectrum from you go ahead i anticipated you might i actually love everything that we're doing here and i think um the proof is in other people's pudding and um we actually really do need this um my only thing is while i understand the limitation on the square footage that is necessary to make sure that we are keeping the price low which i can't i don't think that we need to be restricting the lot coverage to just the 50 percent i think if people want to max out all of their square footage on one floor i don't care um i think our we're living in a time where like the old way of managing both the density and water
are not going to serve us moving forward and i'm particular scared since we were going to get approximately an hour of winter this year um so i i think the water thing is going to start leading out even more for me on decision making so i think this is great and i actually would like to see us become more assertive i don't want us to go into a reckless aggression with it but i would like us to see us be more aggressive with pushing this and with making it available and maybe even trying to find places where we can pilot this responsibly to to demonstrate how it could be used powerfully um personally i um i you know i'm closer to you know customer uh patris position um i you know in in uh housing units um you know we you know developers get
to maximize a lot of their yard you know certainly their setbacks but in sometimes with the size of their building they seem so small in comparison right um i do understand the balance that we have to to have to maintain uh the experience of single family home neighborhoods and make sure that they they still exist and whatnot so i think that there is a balance there i do see some of the changes you're making are in that direction and there are balanced approach um i i'm excited about many of these changes here and simplifies a lot of the process too um of the complexity i mean um i do have some questions maybe you can help me understand this um the front yard setbacks um a little bit you know any updates on that and how you know i remember
the complexity of especially in some of areas of my district where there happens a lot in in other parts of the city where uh non-conforming properties um sometimes that are bay forward or bay you know and that one property in the whole block changes almost everybody else's development and it sometimes it feels irrational to me i understand that we want to sort of fix the problem moving forward but we might know be accomplishing maybe some of our goals so hopefully trying to minimize some of those yards you know and allow people to develop in their own properties so can you walk me through some of the changes you're making on the front on yard setbacks sure one of the biggest changes we made there was removing the block face averaging um right now we require you to go out to all of
your neighbors and measure their front yard from from the front of their building to the property line that's really time consuming for homeowners to to do if they're looking to build a new house or if they're looking to do an extension and maybe they can do a front addition instead of a rear um things like that um we standardize it to 20 feet in the proposed r1 code to 20 feet or equal to a button front yard um so if one of your neighbors is front of of 20 feet you could go down to if they're at 15 you can match them at 15 so um we've removed some of that that kind of tiki tacky language in there and this do have a record you do have requirements this thank you for that that helps a lot because that sort of it was an way to buy this rule for so long so it seems like it's going
to potentially if this goes ahead go away now but you do have some requirements on the backyard correct and you you will simplifying some of that maybe reducing some of those two um and my question relates to some of the properties that may have not been conforming again in the past and they have maybe a large front yard and a very small backyard so now they're limited they're stuck right and in this limbo where they could add a little bit of space on the side or maybe in the back and there's they're not allowed but now they have this front yard that is very hard to make an addition is that is that something that could be potentially addressed with some of these changes absolutely um as proposed the changes to setbacks are quite minimal and we did that just as a starting
point that just based on previous conversations with the public we know that people have strong feelings about their setbacks and so as a starting point we tweaked some things but largely aimed to keep things mostly the same but if that's a concern that you'd like to see addressed or if that continues to come up from public comment we can definitely continue to refine those numbers and there is a slight change because as of right now it's just straight up 25 feet but I think now we're the proposal is 20 percent or 25 feet whichever is less and so if you have that smaller lot or you're disadvantaged you don't have that length or you maybe have a really wide lot so your rear yard is really small it would give them a small allowance but we can continue to look into these things too okay
I'm even interested in looking at some of those but I do appreciate it because I'm important yeah sorry one more thing that I um did want to raise I understand this isn't uh legally speaking isn't a rezone but I am a little worried about just in the amount of residents that this would affect and the fact that they aren't going to get a notice of this like they would for a reason um and I think you quoted like in your report that we're talking about like 70 percent of the residential property in Salt Lake so I am a little worried about how we're going to get the word out about this to give people an opportunity to come and speak so can you talk a little bit about what efforts you're going to be doing you you mentioned them but like maybe give a little more detail
for sure um just a couple minutes ago an email went out about our community open houses to our planning listserv I think that has what is it almost 6,000 recipients on there um we have social media posts scheduled to go out here soon about those as well um when we started this we calculated how many mailers this would require and it would cost over it would cost almost $60,000 um and I just I think we were told that's just not in our budget right now um so if it's important to the council I think we could try to look into that again and so we'd be happy to hear that feedback from the council but we are trying to make these events known as much as possible through the city website social media we've also tried to involve the recognized community organizations
the local councils and so we're trying to advertise as broadly as possible but we would definitely look more feedback on how we can do better you said though you weren't going to go to all of the community councils right you're just going to go to one per district that plan instead of going to each council individually we will be holding three public open houses open city wide but largely you know in locations on the west central and on the east side and we do have information that we could present those open houses that shows I mean yes technically 70 percent of those residential lots they're technically within fit in that r1 s r r 2 but a lot of them don't even have enough space or can't meet the lot coverage or they're literally so tight in between that you
couldn't even access through your yard so it's not as if it's not fair to say that 70 percent of lots could have another one it does mean that it's applicable but we do have some in some data and some information that we can share the public to give a more realistic view of how many homes or how many lots it it would be applicable to yeah and I I'm not trying to be sensationalist and say like you know 70 percent of you are going to have one of these in your yard in the next five years I get that but I don't know how else to communicate to the people that do know the lots out there that like and how many especially with like a flaglot or something how many abutting property owners would otherwise might get notification that want this time and and it is a big change for those that
where a lot does qualify so so I'm not trying to make it like you know 70 percent of people are going to be affected but I think it's still we shouldn't understate the significance complete potential significance okay and mr. Chair if I could just jump in the when the council did the there were a series of housing initiatives including the affordable housing initiatives and the council kind of made a judgment call that you know even though this is a unique situation maybe doesn't require notification the council made kind of a judgment call that it warranted citywide mailing so to planning's point about not having necessarily budget for this otherwise the council could decide to allocate you know either allocate those funds separately from general fund or
share feedback that that is of particular importance so I don't know that's something to consider how would we would that be through a budget amendment I think you could do it that way a little added item you could do a council added item or you could discuss it in the context of the annual budgets and this is this a midway yeah this isn't scheduled for action right yeah um this is early enough in the process that I think um yeah that I think we could discuss sort of the different options for funding that okay thank you you know I'm certainly you know I will like to ensure that we balance the explanation correctly because there's a lot of people that are going to think that this is going to pop it in every single house and they're going to bring the pitchforks and that is not
been the experience throughout but at the same time balancing the feedback and trying to seek it so I think that there is a way of doing that but I would love to hear in the process you know about your town homes and you know all of this I would like to see how many people you attended maybe you can report that to us and if you can do an extra outreach to the community councils through through email to make sure that they know this presentation that they know all of this and any other creative ways of you know that that may know involved city-wide mailing in the meantime I think that will be welcome by by this council um any other questions okay um thank you so much for the presentation yeah but it thinks for your time and just just you know we we are wanting to be methodical about
this we're not trying to rush this we know it's a bold proposal but we also know that we have significant issues that we're trying to help solve so we definitely want to be transparent and communicate as well as we can with as many members of the city so thanks for your time this is a big deal so thank you awesome thanks y'all we're moving on to item number five this is an ordinance for a zoning map amendment at approximately 2260 2270 22 90 east 1300 south um Brian Fulmer will join us at the table who is our council policy analyst um Brooke Olson senior planner and Amy Thompson planning manager um Brian thank you thank you mr chair this is a proposal to amend the zoning map for the properties you mentioned in district six from their current r17000 which is
single family residential to MU 3 or mixed use 3 to construct for sale residential units consisting of town homes and condominiums these are proposed to be built on the subject properties and on additional MU 3 property to the south which is also owned by the applicant the applicant is with us and would like to address the account address the council at the appropriate time and i'll turn it over to Brooke thank you next slide please since Brian already covered the details of the request I would just like to reiterate that the planning commission voted unanimously to forward a recommendation of approval with conditions next slide please to give you a quick overview of the details if the request is approved the applicant intends to apply for a lot consolidation to the combine the properties
which are outlined in red with the property directly south outlined in yellow which is zoned MU 3 and construct a residential development consisting of approximately 28 so that's a correction from 26 residential units approximately 12 of the units would be constructed on the subject properties including the eight town home units and three to four condominium units next slide
the slide shows some images of the existing single family homes which front 1300 south the remainder of the block is zoned MU 3 next slide the slide shows the context of the area the site is surrounded by a mix of single family residential open space and commercial uses and is within close proximity to foothill drive and within walking distance of a variety of amendi types next slide zoning map amendments are reviewed against standards of consideration located in chapter 21 a 50 and staff in the planning commission found the proposal complies with the standards with conditions next slide to give you a quick overview of the MU 3 zone the purpose of the zone is to provide up to three to four story moderately scaled commercial
and mixed use development adjacent to low density residential neighborhoods the zone allows a mix of uses and residential and commercial uses intended to provide neighborhood serving uses and a mix of medium density residential housing types the standards of the zone are based on the range of building forms allowed in the zone including a range of low and medium density residential storefront and mixed use the zone is also subject to design standards to facilitate the development of small scale structures that are compatible and scale with the surrounding development and patterns of the block next slide the properties are in the east bench master plan within a community node and on the fringe of the neighborhoods future land use area or a variety of
medium density housing types and a mix of neighborhood serving uses are appropriate the plan recognizes the majority of the housing in east bench is single family and residential and identifies a need to provide a diverse mix of housing choices for all stages of life the proposal is consistent with the master plan and with recommendations the proposal is consistent with the cy plans as well next slide the proposed community benefit is intended to provide housing that aligns with the general plan by dedicating 10% of the new forest all housing to those with incomes at 80% of the area meeting income the applicant anticipates that both the market rate and affordable unit mix would consist of two to three bedroom units and the applicant has also been coordinating with a community
group that has a cip application and for review regarding public right of way improvements along 1300 south including the subject property frontages the applicant is considering including right of way improvements in addition to the community benefit of providing affordable forest all housing units and can speak more to that details regarding the community benefit requirements including the number of bedrooms the affordable unit shall have will need to be determined prior to a decision on the amendment and will be specified in a development agreement next slide the subject properties contain three three bedroom dwelling units and city code requires that each demolish unit be replaced on the property and consists of the same number of bedrooms additionally the code allows the applicant
to propose one option first is a reptile restriction on the replacement unit or the applicant may propose a payment to the city housing fund in lieu of the rental restriction so it should be noted that all units constructed on the property are ownership units so staff would like to confirm that the what they counseled that e1 is not applicable and the second option would apply in this case and it should be noted the council may modify or waive these requirements next slide tenant displacement requirements are also applicable to this proposal the code requires the owner to provide tenant relocation assistance to the displaced tenants which includes moving expenses application fees deposits monthly rental assistance up to $7,200 the owner may also relocate the displaced tenants
into another unit they own at the same rental rate in place of paying the relocation fees be through D
the applicant does have some concerns regarding the requirements and can speak more to that it should be noted the council may also waive or modify these requirements next slide the planning commission recommended approval of the request with the conditions that the council review the components of thriving in place to ensure that they are all represented in the potential rezone and that several provisions being incorporated into a development agreement for the zoning map amendment to mitigate the loss of the existing residential units the displacement of tenants to secure the community benefit next slide so if the council can chooses to accept the conditions there are a few items that staff will need the council to provide direction on for drafting
the provisions of the development agreement to ensure the provisions are enforceable and these details would need to be finalized prior to a decision on the proposal and I've listed these on the slide for reference and that concludes my presentation the applicants also here to speak to the request but I'm happy to take any questions that's what we're doing thank you appreciate that I appreciate the developer and the working with the community and you and also the staff working with the community on on this proposal could you touch on the there's always been concerns about the traffic pattern through that area and going from just three single family homes with with multiple tenants in them because the 13 or south has always has plenty of cars parked along 13
or south which is also kind of stepped away from the broader street so they're not in really the traffic flow but could you discuss the parking requirements on an off-street parking availability also because I know on 2300 there's no parking on 2300 south east can you kind of talk to us about the parking requirements yeah so the MU-3 zone generally requires one to two parking spaces per residential dwelling unit the applicant did also submit a traffic study that indicated that it would have minimal impact overall the parking associated with the proposal is proposed to be underground at the moment but the transportation division did review and agree with the findings so once or if the zoning map amendment is approved they would need to further work with the transportation
division to address access to the site as well okay and then just on the on the unit so each unit would have a set number of spots for that unit so it comes with the unit the parking spot is sold with the unit is that I would have to I guess that's more of the developers question and yeah yeah the developer can speak to that okay sure listen by the developer here to the table
we're gonna give them five minutes for a brief presentation or maybe some questions from the council members when you join will you state your name for the record?
Joe Johnson at night J development van Lewis method studio
do you want your time to start for your Christmas okay go ahead
appreciate the opportunity to be here maybe just a quick brief history this project started when we we met with councilman Dugan and sought some guidance from him before we even started down this path for this project and I just love to underscore the time and effort we took in meeting with all three community councils as well as multiple residents and held meetings and forums to get feedback from the local neighbors and residents of in this area because we know this is a highly
sensitive area when you're bringing more housing into a place like this and and it was just it's been a great exercise to meet with the residents and get their feedback in and councilman Dugan you're right from day one when we met you said traffic would be a hot topic and if I could just answer your question then go back to to reviewing the project the project is designed to keep all of the parking requirements underneath so we we add a massive expense to the project there's 28 units and we're providing close to 60 parking stalls I believe it's 57 right now so it's more than two per unit with additional guest stalls or guests underneath the building so there's really no on-street parking required for any resident and there are dedicated units that come dedicated
stalls that come with the purchase of a unit in all of our meetings with all the residents the number one was is they're concerned with traffic on 13th and so spilling into 13th and so we took it upon ourselves with our incredible architect to create additional ways for egress in and out of the property to alleviate that burden and so as we've worked with our architect and designers and community residents you know we've come up with not just an egress on 13th but there's one on on to 2300 and there's one on football of art to mitigate traffic on 13th south if I may just highlight a couple things really quick this project really does three incredible things we feel strongly about number one it provides a massive need for for home ownership for housing on the
east bench we've met with some in south of these uh mr right tom tom us right principal broker some in south of these lives in the area and that he just their firm could not emphasize enough the need for to get people off the ladder as he calls it is there's this missing middle of people that they're dedicated to living in their neighborhood in their community for a number of years and they don't want to move to the west side they don't want to move downtown they want to move to south jordan and there's not places for them to relocate to where there's no maintenance required they can live in their zip code they can still go to dans and they can stay at foot hill and go to the university utah and their doctor and so there's this missing middle and we've got a blighted parking lot and
three rundown homes and so we've tried to create a beautiful community benefit number one aesthetically we feel like we created a community benefit for this area and many of them called it the gateway into st mary's so 13 south is like a gateway and so we've tried to create something aesthetically beautiful when you drive up 13th it's now going to be oh wow this is really this feels good and we thought our architects done a great job doing that so number two so number one is just adding something beautiful to the community number two is a community benefit of affordable housing we're offering over over 10 percent units to the 80 percent ami as well as brook mentioned we've met with three of the community councils like they came to us and they said we're involved in this
cip will you participate and we said absolutely it's really important for them they said and I'm quoting them larry gaylord president she just said we don't have an identity in st mary's all these other harvard yell east milcree she listed all them they'll have an identity and we don't and we wanted identity and it's the donner trail and so we said it comes right down 13th and we said we'll let us help participate in that for starters we'll create a monument in front of the project and so that as well it contribute to the cip and so we've we've done everything we can to work with the residents to to make this a community project for not only for them but for the community as well aesthetically okay time thank you handsome members I appreciate working with the community so I
I guess it's more for the staff side house because this is a rezone of the three units and we're replacing the three I would say naturally occurring in affordable units with three four sale units at 80 percent ami and then the other units are all just market rate two and three bedrooms across the board correct and in the parking room below and and then the height restrictions at 40 35 feet 35 35 feet okay and I think it's yeah we're right at that yeah
you talked on the microphone for the record sorry we do have we're right near that height limit and we would we would probably want to pursue the added five feet through design review later and on the so no more the staff questions so I appreciate design I appreciate this is an area it's a walk where you can walk across I mean for build not a great street to walk across but you can still walk across the dans you still have the places on on the east side you got the bike trails nearby got the golf course and they are and it trails to the the bike pass up to the zoo and beyond so appreciate that that portion of the design and the and the affordable housing in the parking and working with them on the parking type of house more to on the staff side
MU 3 requirements if it's not housing because it's mixed use on how how does that work if it was did if they were just doesn't pencil out now we got three houses that are MU 3 we have a parking we have a they still have to this fill in the displacement so they would still have to build three affordable units in that on that spot is that correct that's correct even if they did consolidate them and they had to sell these property would still have the three affordable units on that on that those those lots yeah those provisions would be drafted in the development agreement which would run with the land so if they were to propose any changes that would have to come back to council okay and okay thank you any other questions no good okay appreciate it I think we
we are good I appreciate the your time being here we're gonna move on to the next yes can I just add one more thing if it's brief it's real brief brook mentioned this but that entire block where we're located is it automatically got zoned to the MU 3 and so we would propose it makes sense to make this whole block unanimous there's just little sliver brook mention that's the r17 and so the consistency is now that entire island is you it looks like an island is now zoned all concurrent so thank you thank you thank you we're moving on we're gonna shift to a little bit we're gonna since we're a little over time we're going to move to item number seven I'm push the break right after I hope that's okay since we have D Brewer here from DTA so the item is an informational item for
downtown alliance planning and support for 2027 temple open house so welcome yeah yeah we'll do it right now come on come on in and then yes let's go it here's your time thank you chair and hello council members hello again glad to be here I want to brief you today and I stress brief on an opportunity in downtown Salt Lake City it's the open house for temple square in 2027 I want to cover the customer and economic opportunities parking and access activation to capture spending and an assessment we recently made of on on main street I want to acknowledge the limitations of what we're doing and that there are many other partners that are involved but I'll do my best to represent what's happening across those areas but may have to defer to them next slide so how will
the open house impact daily downtown visitation first quick facts about what we know the open house will run from April until October 27 the church estimates there will be three to five million visitors the last discussions I had with the church are that they expect to operate tours 10 to 12 hours a day seven days a week during that time tickets are free but they must be reserved they estimate that the tour throughput will be 3000 guests an hour now while the total number of visitors is large we need not be overwhelmed by that number downtown's current infrastructure is sufficient to metabolize those 3000 guests per hour coming from the open house and this flow of visitors really presents a tremendous economic opportunity for downtown for the merchants who are
downtown and frankly for the tax revenue opportunities as well next slide please
we anticipate that the 2027 open house will have a major impact on visitation spending and sales tax generation an additional 18 to 25 000 visitors each day downtown on average this is a 25 percent increase in the daily customer volume for all of 2027 25 percent increase in visitor volume downtown this visitor volume will be spread across the day so rather than a fire hose of visitors say for a jazz game this is sort of metered out across the day which enables our merchants really to to to respond to that I think in a meaningful way next slide just be recycling a slide I've used before what you're looking at here this is normal context for a normal day downtown you see the average there of about 91 000 customers a day and that we peak up around 172 000 this is
conventions performances sporting events fan X is the biggest peak you see there in case you wondered
but 140 downtown dining and social establishments regularly absorb these spikes I think that's important to note so there have been some who suggested that we're well we need to bring all this food and beverage into the area I would view that as an intercept to merchants who have been already invested in downtown Salt Lake City next slide please again this is just normal hourly distribution of visitors and you can see that out of market visitors this salmon color there really carry the evenings there next slide this shows you days of the week again this opportunity in 2027 allows us to turn Sunday through Thursday into Friday every day and we look forward to that visitors already account for 63% of the customers in the downtown economy and we look forward to
this opportunity to capture an estimated 320 million dollars in additional spending in 2027 next slide
downtown parking resources are sufficient for most days of the temple open house UTA track service is as rich around temple square as it is anywhere in the state
we this we think that a hotel shuttle bus route would be helpful to reduce additional traffic and parking congestion I had understood that is underway that's not but we're continuing conversations to try and make that happen I'm going to skip over those details but you've got them in the notes if we could go to the next slide um 2027 excuse me it is important to note that during this time there are some pinch points smith entertainment group will be excavating 300 west and building a plaza for the entertainment district the delta center will be under renovation as well and the salt lake and salt lake county will be rebuilding the salt palace and we understand that it is in the intention is to close north temple and west temple for safety reasons so those are pinch
points those are real pinch points that we have to contend with next slide please the alliance's goal is to support downtown merchants in seizing this customer spending opportunity present a vibrant downtown induce spending at downtown businesses and we're investing in strategies to accomplish these objectives next slide our plans include producing daily outdoor performances and activations in the downtown core preparing downtown merchants for success and attracting new merchants downtown and to this end we'll we recently convened a downtown retail round table to engage commercial real estate experts city departments and property owners in developing strategies both for leasing and for programming um visit salt lake and the alliance are discussing where
we can place staffed visitor information kiosks so if we have all these new visitors flowing into town um we want to provide them real time information about what their options are for activities dining and shopping let me just show you a few examples next slide these are examples of what I mean by staff hospitality kiosks on the left is a mobile kiosk that our ambassador provider uses in in Boston excuse me to welcome guests and guide them to downtown merchants bars and restaurants another alternative on the right is to build a temporary structure that's a possibility visit salt lake also has a mobile visitor trailer that we could put to work and again those conversations continue between us and our strategic partner visit salt lake next slide
this is about the activations there are seven potential sites for performances within a block or so of temple square our blocks team is developing a program and budget to produce daytime and evening activations this is an example step in on main is a free summer series that we produced the last two years featuring cultural organizations artists and arts organizations on the front steps of the echols theater and this is a proven model that we have produced that we can expand on to uh draw people into the core next slide this is the a wildly successful mariachi festival also supported by the blocks of produced by a partnership with the mexican consulate county arts and echols theater again an excellent example of something we can expand on next slide nighttime activations
like frame by frame that we did during sundance film institute next slide this is a performance by sb dance curbside theater on the pierpont parking garage we'll be doing that again this year and other programming on top of that garage next slide i just had to put in this other pretty picture because that was really a fabulous night and a plug for you to join us this year for it next slide this is one of our pop-up galleries and public art events that blocks produces across downtown next slide as i mentioned there are seven potential areas for performances within blocks of main street we're exploring programming and possibilities programming possibilities and costs at these sites um but i stress cost because programming if we're going to pay artists if we're going to be
serious about programming downtown there are costs associated with that downtown alliance recently audited current conditions on main street this includes the condition of streets scapes and storefronts um and we looked at vacancy and opportunities there and i'll be sharing more with you about that in a few minutes additionally scott anderson has engaged struck a creative team to develop some uh design treatments and visual elements that would be installed on main street to further um draw visitors into the commercial district and uh we're working closely with those groups and those on those possibilities there's not yet a full budget for funding the programming and visual elements um but we recognize that the mayor's office has um proposed some previously
allocated funds be directed to this opportunity and of course we support that and the city's investment would empower these plans to be accomplished next slide
communication is going to be key there are varied audiences varied messages new visitors need guidance to food entertainment and experiences regular wasatch front visitors need to know that they can still come downtown we don't want to dissuade them discourage them from visiting downtown merchants need briefings and coordination uh to support their operational plans and our downtown workers and residents need updates and information to support their patterns and their commutes um next slide i want to briefly touch on the assessment that we did recently of main street considering the opportunities in 2027 but also in 2034 also beyond that main street has been our historic corridor um for welcoming people downtown and and um we took a look at this through a guest
uh the lens of the guest experience to make um and we asked the questions what would make main street more vibrant what would attract more customers what would increase their dwell time there and enhance their experiences downtown we're still processing all of the aspects of that assessment but here are a few observations next slide that are audit on main street revealed that there are sparks of artful urban interventions there next slide there are also hardscape elements that are deteriorated and present maintenance challenges visual clutter outdated signs deteriorating walkways light poles and banners banner poles that are not usable and are incitely next slide
we noted inconsistent design elements um detracting from a sense of place and a sense of community next slide please and yes there are some missing teeth in our smile on main street and an important question arises from this assessment will these current conditions be our conditions in 2027 in 2034 what how shall we move forward what will our current conditions be at that time I want to suggest a thought exercise because we all have our conceptions of downtown when you walk down main street in your mind's eye you can close your eyes if you want but let's let's walk down main street from south temple to 400 south um we will pass approximately 4 000 linear feet of first floor ground level storefronts and offices what would you estimate are the is the percentage of those
linear feet that are vacant storefronts and one way to think about this question is what are the opportunities to make a difference and to make a change there so on the following slides are maps of occupancy and vacancy on each of the blocks of main street between south temple and 400 south the maps do not express leesable square feet the linear foot metric helps us understand what the opportunities are to improve the pedestrian experience so if we could go to the next slide next slide after that great so this is south temple to first south and you see a lot of red there which means a lot of occupancy and there are a couple of spots there that are vacant um there can go to the next slide this is the next block first south the second south
there are also opportunities to create vitality and public spaces along main street think regent streets the walkway there exchange place the entrance to gallivan these are public spaces where we can program and bring and again draw people in you can go to the next slide that's the block between second and third probably has the lightest retail presence and there are some obvious vacancies there and the next slide shows you what we sometimes call the bar block and there are a couple of vacancies there so I will answer the question I asked about percentage of linear feet it's 16.9 percent maybe you thought it might most people guess higher than that but I think it's important to understand what we can really make a difference in right if there is space that is
we may not like what how a space is occupied that may have limited use in certain day parts banks are not vibrant at night um keys on main bless them for what they do that is not that that does not enliven main street during the day so um again trying to focus our attention on where we can make some investments there that is a quick summary um I'm happy to answer any questions and look forward to working with city departments and with the council as we go forward and make the best of these opportunities council members this member be sure be sure so what do you see happening next are you just being a great public private partner in a triple P here and you're just letting us know where you're gonna go look for some funding and resources to help
activate are you looking for us to work alongside you to incentivize getting those fallow places activated what what are you I love information but this feels imminent so what are you what are you in view what are you viewing as next steps thanks for asking I came here at the request of the administration who I believe is bringing you some proposals some funding proposals to take advantage of these opportunities and they wanted council to understand a little bit about what that opportunity was I'll answer your question with I do think this is a good investment even just from a tax revenues standpoint we do not have a specific request we fully support the request that the administration will
bring you and I think has brought parts of that I think it's budget amendment for if you remember included a rescope of some of the funds from Open Streets this past year to provide for some of this and go ahead at your March 10th CRA meeting we will have a specific budget request on that agenda and and more information then to Scott Anderson and struck or scheduled I think on both your city council and CRA meetings at night to give you to add on to what D has just shared do we anticipate that that will be the exclusive ask or do we anticipate that there will be if there's ongoing I encourage you all to track some of the taxation bills currently going on that are going to really hamper our ability to approve things in a timely manner and get them dispersed this I
anticipate that the state could really foul some plans up here and we would need your voice up there loudly explaining how these bills could complicate things and definitely understood any other questions certainly I would like to know really what the funds were they're coming from and the risk of I do have questions about the risk of some of the funds for Open Streets currently you know and how that came about and you know that will be you know good conversation to have I would love to have some information about that yes go ahead I think the other demographic information that felt like it was missing is this feels like it might be a deviation from the typical crowd that I encounter on a Friday or Saturday night in Main Street and as I was
counting places I only counted two restaurants currently not inclusive of the city Creek food court that would allow families to eat there and so as we're developing things I would love more insight into demographics that we're anticipating not just volume and maybe how we're creating we can create something but if it doesn't respond to the actual needs we will have invested in something that does not return on the investment the way we expect it to you it's a great point and we're meeting with the church next week and hope to understand a little bit more about those demographics so that we can meet them where they are I think that we're good thank you thank you thanks for your attention I appreciate it good evening as my voice we're gonna take a little break
let's take 15 minutes okay we're back from the quick break and now we're gonna be moving on to item number eight is an informational item for the Capital Health Community Plan update we're gonna have this Kate Ward word Council policy analyst come join us soon right Kate Brooke Olsen senior planner Amy Thompson planning manager and Caitlyn War principal planner might be mispronouncing your names because I do that quite often so Kate is going to join us right now she's coming so it's your time Kate great thank you the planning division has been working on a capital Hill community plan update and within that it they are at the very beginning stages of this there's a few policy questions that we think you may want to consider as a review that includes what large city
budgetary items are anticipated to be included in the plan update additionally what significant changes may arise in the upcoming plan including street changes zoning modifications and any new multimodal options and then finally are there any specific elements and other plans that apply in this area such as the right of being in place that the council would like to play special focus on as the planning division continues their work with that alternate over to the planning team good afternoon my name is Katie Len Ward and you know my colleague Brooke Olson we are co-managing the capital Hill community plan update that's currently underway the purpose of this briefing is to inform the council of the update
effort and listen to any feedback you may have at the surly stage in the process we will also share some highlights from the existing conditions report and discuss steps in the planning update process and opportunities for the community to get involved next site the current community plan was adopted in 2001 this plan update will create a vision for the community through 2040 the intent is to develop a plan that is focused on land use links those land use policies with other plans such as plan salt lake housing SLC various transportation plans and reimagine nature and also identifies key action items to implement the land use plan the planning division envisions a plan that is easy to use direct direct can be implemented includes metrics to evaluate
the effectiveness of the plan and set up to be updated on a more frequent basis instead of taking decades next slide this slide highlights the role community plans play within the larger framework of the city wide plans and goals community plans build on the city policies and initiatives established in our city wide general plan plan salt lake because each neighborhood and community within salt lake is unique each community will help carry out and contribute to the city wide vision in its own unique way next slide this slide outlines a general processing steps for plan updates we are currently right in the thick of the first phase of public engagement next site we've broken down the public engagement into three
general phases we kicked off the first phase which is identifying opportunities and issues in the fall of last year as part of the initial engagement we published an existing conditions report that provides a comprehensive overview of the capital hill communities current demographics land use connectivity open space historic and cultural assets and infrastructure serving as a snapshot in time this report helps establish a foundational understanding of the present state next site now we'll get into some of the existing condition highlights the existing conditions report is available online at the capital or on the capital hill community plan update project website and is also linked in the staff memo for
your information next site the capital hill plan area is located north of downtown it's generally bound by north temple street on the south I 15 on the west city Creek Canyon and open space areas on the east and the northern boundary of the city itself the area is approximately 7.25 square miles or 4.6 acres square acres here's here's the plan area in the context of other community boundaries in the city next site capital hills home to several distinct neighborhoods such as marblade and side downs and Guadalupe as well as an industrial area of the city next slide this is a quick snapshot of the demographics the capital hill plan area consists of four different census tracks the map shows the boundaries and ID number
of each tracked several demographic care characteristics are broken down into these tracks to show how the population differs depending on location within the plan area in terms of overall demographics capital hill has an estimated population of 10,500 which is approximately 5% of the city's population over a 23-year period capital hills population grew by 29% while the cities grew by 12% 82% of capital hills growth happened in the Guadalupe area alone which is the tracked on the western portion of the plan area these changes can mostly be attributed to the rapid redevelopment around the north temple transit station a high percentage of the population over age 25 has a college degree median income is fairly similar to the median income of
Salt Lake City as a whole with the exception of one census track the dark blue color which is generally the enzyme downs neighborhood there are approximately 5,779 households in Capitol Hill which accounts for 6% of the city's households 28% of those households are owner occupied compared to the city average of 47% next slide capital hill contains some of the oldest structures in the city with portions of the plan being part of the original plan A of Salt Lake City survey the oldest residential structures date back to 1852 this map is helpful to visualize the development periods in Capitol Hill over half of the residential buildings in Capitol Hill were constructed by the 1920s reflecting a historic residential development pattern that predates the
adoption of Salt Lake City's first zoning ordinance in 1927 by contrast only 4% of non-residential buildings were built before 1920 non-residential building stock was constructed much later with 60% constructed between 1960 and 19 next slide please as far as land use and zoning Capitol Hill has the broadest range of zoning and land use types in the city a large portion of the area is zoned open space manufacturing and extractive 12% of the land is residential three and a half percent is residential mixed use and two and a half percent is institutional and public lands next slide in terms of housing types some majority housing typing Capitol Hill is apartments at 65% of the total housing occupying 17% of the residential land area in contrast single family homes
consist of 17% of the total housing and occupy 72.5% of the residential land area while the remaining 18% is other housing types including 9% condos 5% duplexes and 4% town homes next slide meeting home price in Capitol Hill between 2023 to 2024 was slightly higher than Salt Lake City as a whole at 580 $2,500 the number of cost burden households which refers to those that spend more than 30% or more of their income on housing was lower overall in comparison to the city as a whole with 15% cost burden owners and 33% cost burden renters there are a total of 691 de-districted housing units across nine projects in the plan area including seven rental projects and two ownership projects next slide this map shows the
parks open space trails and recreation land uses which occupy 22% of the land area a hundred percent of households within Capitol Hill are within a 15-minute walk of a park or trail some of the popular parks include Memory Grove and Enzyme Peak which is the main access point for the northern foothills next slide as far as transportation is concerned daily traffic volumes are highest along I-15 Beck Street North Temple 300 West Victory Road 600 North State Street and Main Street there is a range of transit options in Capitol Hill including bus light rail and the front-runner commuter rail North Temple Guadalupe Station bus routes mainly run along North Temple 300 West near West High and around the
Capitol of the bus routes on the plan area there are two frequent service bus routes that run every 15 minutes four regular service bus routes three of which run every 30 minutes on weekdays and one of the routes runs every 60 minutes additionally there are three limited service routes and one flux bus route these run a specific number of trips per day on the weekdays with varying frequency it should be noted that all of these times are based on the weekday schedules and then UTA generally operates on a 15-minute frequency for tracks and 30 minutes for front-runner service next slide the Capitol Hill plan area has three national historic districts and includes two local historic district areas the Capitol Hill local historic district which is shown in the
solid purple area on the map as well as the eastern portion of city Creek local historic district is shown in solid orange there are 35 individually listed historic sites in the plan area boundaries and 29 of those are local landmark sites next slide so we just wanted to wrap it up with touching on the community engagement and next steps next slide we're currently in the first phase of engagement to inform the public about the plan update the survey and identify opportunities and issues we've held six in-person events at various locations throughout the community including Jamfest and Zim Peak Trailhead Lee's marketplace Capitol Hill Community Council Marmalade Library and Mountain West Sider we've conducted four stakeholder interviews in September we publish the
project webpage an existing conditions report in November we published the online survey and we've received 60 responses so far we also recently briefed the planning commission and the historical and mark commission next slide we've scheduled several events throughout the month of February at various locations throughout the community we had an open house event at Mountain West Sider last week and then we have additional events planned at 801 coffee roasters Lee's market at 4th West in handlebar next slide as far as timeline next steps we're currently working on identifying opportunities and issues in spring 2026 we will work to plan we'll work on the big ideas phase which involves sharing the initial engagement results getting feedback on the common
themes and drafting the initiatives and then in summer we will work on the final vision phase which includes publishing the draft plan attending meetings and public hearings to get feedback and working to finalize the plan and that's what we have that concludes our presentation we're happy to take any questions.
Well thank you. I'm really excited about the progress that you made and thank you so much for all the engagement in the community and talking with the key stakeholders that you've spoken with and and for including me in the process I really appreciate that as well so I'm really excited about it and but yeah I feel like I've already had the chance to give a lot of my input so I don't want to repeat too much of that here but I do appreciate the work. Thank you. Thank you.
Council Member Bichro. Justice since we're at the beginning do we feel like it feels you very clearly stated how diverse the needs in this district are how diverse the experiences are. Are we confident that we can do justice to the Guadalupe community when their experiences align much more with the West side planning that's going on for instance they're bound by the trains the same way other Westiders are their socioeconomic aligns much more closely with the West side their identity if you tell a person in Guadalupe that they're not West side I hope you are prepared for a fight they will scrap. Do we do we feel confident that this bear this boundary still reflects realities and allows a plan like this to be successful? Yes so the Guadalupe neighborhood is within the
boundaries of the plan and we're currently working on scheduling some community events specifically trying to target that area so that is definitely on our radar or something that we're considering. We've also been closely following the West East connection study which improves to increase accessibility between the West and the East side and address some of those barriers such as the railroad crossings that project is being taken on by the transportation division at the moment so we're following that study closely as well and we'll work to make sure that our recommendations are consistent with the findings as well from that study and Amy may have more to add.
I was just gonna say one thing to keep in mind is the the boundaries of the plans I mean I think the avenues plan is a little bit of an anomaly in terms of your comment just because there's not a lot of diverse pockets within the avenues but we do have several plan areas central city for example where there is just it's such a big area and there are many pockets of that community plan that have different needs than you know within another pocket within that same community so while we're not considering a boundary change with the Capitol Hill plan in terms of Guadalupe we definitely acknowledge that and we'll have to do some additional outreach in that area and acknowledge those specific needs in
that area. To that point I would like to to add you know in unbiased and unfair to seek unbiased unfair feedback not only on the train issue but on the freeway issue and the connection between the two parts of the city unfortunately you know we got a little stopped by having that conversation a couple year and a half ago I don't remember how long it was you know about the potential opening of some of those streets to connect the two sides and some neighbors fell based on the against it because of some of the issues we have in the city especially on the West side but that adds up to the disconnect between the two parts of the city right and and I think that there are ways to handle that but I
would love to actually to get actual feedback from a lot more people to that feedback was well received I understand their concerns and I listened but I would love to hear more about that too and you said that this is about 5% of the population of the city and I bet there's like about 30% of the emails that you know Chris gets and I'm a bit more but I you know this is an area that is changing and is growing so I really appreciate this process. There was a question on the staff report that seemed interesting to me and it related to the issues of funding. Are there any anticipated funding on the plans that you know they might be potentially seen you know that we may have to have in context with the general budget understand I just I do hate sometimes
setting up the expectation by high and then struggling with you know making those things happen as a you know any issue that we struggle a lot in the city sometimes because we dream big and then we fall in short sometimes so any any concerns on the aspects are about like potential big expenditures that may be coming because of this plan or maybe to maybe talking about about it with the community because of this plan. Yeah so we're still pretty early at this point in the process and we're still collecting feedback from the public during the next phase we will analyze the feedback we've received as well as our data and begin drafting some big ideas to address the community's priorities which will
ultimately shape the draft initiatives and policies that go into the plan. One of the main goals of this plan is to create policies that are realistic and can be implemented so one section of the plan will include implementation metrics that will consider city staff resources as well as budget needs so at this point in the process we have not identified any but we'll have more to come in the next phases. And this includes warm springs correct this area is within the warm springs that's correct that's a you know that's a place that I also would love to understand really what the community would like to see eventually something needs to happen there I'm hoping something amazing and I would love to
to get a real sense of what that is so we get some direction it seems like we maybe they lost. Yeah thank you thank you I think that concludes the time thank you so much I appreciate you coming. Thank you thank you. Moving on to item number nine at the another informational item for the Wasatch Front Transit to Trail program we're gonna have Josh Stassinos from the Utah Open Dance presenting to us Josh is your time hello thank you so much for allowing me to meet with you today and it's nice to see you again and we're Carlson that her recently at a community council for ballpark which is where we're located I've heard you guys talking a lot the last little while about affordability and equity water air quality throwing in traffic on top of that I'm here to talk
to you about transit to trails Wasatch Front Utah Open Lands we saved a big tract of land called Bonanza Flat just on the other side of Park City they were worried about density and it's kind of an unusual story in that Bonanza Flat lies in Wasatch County but it's owned by Park City they passed a $25 million bond to help buy it and prevent it from being developed it was a shortfall of $13 million which Utah Open Lands spearheaded the fundraising for the next six months and there were people from Salt Lake Valley and all over the place that helped fund that 13 million 1,500 pristine acres of hiking biking lovely stuff and from July to September all the trails are open we do close a section of
those trails for about nine months of the year for the elk and the deer and the moose to be natural and have babies and all that fun stuff so the transit the trails idea was sparked up there in Park City and we worked we put a pilot program together up there and started getting people up to the trailheads if you want to go to the next slide so I kind of talked a little bit about it you can see from the beautiful picture Bonanza is especially popular but from Salt Lake City residents in the fall when the leaf peeping starts happening I personally went up there to either leaf peep or bike or hike about 14 times and we know from cell phone data which I'll get into a little bit later that about
a hundred thousand residents from the Salt Lake Valley went up to Bonanza Flat last year and 22% of those were from Salt Lake City proper so we know people are going up there we know when it gets hot in July people are looking for an escape from the heat we also know that traffic up Big Cottonwood Canyon which is generally the direction people go is not a fun place to go it's a pinch point for us and so transit the trails is our wasatch expansion is a concierge service we would run it Saturdays and Sundays for 14 weeks from July to September it would be a free shuttle program and it would go up from the base of Big Cottonwood Canyon up to Bonanza Flat and the Bloods Lake Trail so kind of a fun free thing that makes it equitable if people don't have a car
that's gonna make it that far and still want to get out of the heat and Utah Mountain Shuttle who we're working with has an app for reservation services so that we people can book their little spot in advance you want to go to the next slide so in 2019 before Bonanza Flat was saved people were going over guardsmen in in frequenting that area and they were parking on the side of the street and it was crazy you want to hit play you're gonna see how packed it is how unsafe it is there was a time where emergency vehicles couldn't actually make it through the Canyon roads for people who needed attention because there's just people everywhere in the summertime obviously they want to go hike they want to bike they want to get some cooler temperatures and they were
doing that in a major way in 2020 with Park City and all the support that we had we protected Bonanza Flat immediately put into action you know management plan which included enforcement of parking so if you want to go the next video we'll see what it looks like now this is what changes when more people leave their car behind and as somebody again who went up there many times I'll actually I drove up to Park City with my bike parked at Park City Mountain rode my bike over to the transit took the purple line which is now a permanent part of that that was our pilot program that's now a permanent part of their transportation and I would go up there and it was beautiful and bike all day and then come back down amazing experience and amazing feedback
from everybody as you can see it's safer it's better next slide please so that's why we created transit to trails a free concierge style shuttle it reduces congestion reduces parking pressure and and that's the other thing imagine this you want to go leaf peeping in September you drive through Big Cottonwood Canyon you don't love the traffic on a Saturday in Big Cotton Canyon you get over guards been passed you get to the parking lot and there's nowhere to park another reason reduce the cars on the road do a shuttle thing and we we get this go in the same way we did in Park City next this is the slide that shows all the data so with cell phone pings Park City was able to get me this data and you can see the raw numbers of where people are coming from
in Salt Lake City is the number one user of Bananza Flat so we know for a fact that residents are going up there do you guys raise a hand do you guys leave the city when it's 105 degrees and really hot and we have no water yeah exactly next slide so our vision is that 14 or 13 weeks Saturdays and Sundays from July 4th to September 30th that's when all those trail systems are open and when most trails are being used there partnering with Utah Mountain Shuttle there'd be two 14 passenger vans with bike capacity reservations would be required so writers understand the schedule and the return times they would happen with an app with Mountain shuttles we we have a tentative schedule and as we're still
in early talks with them that would be about a nine hour day with shuttles bouncing back once an hour and the estimated seasonal cost for the pilot program would be about $75,000 to do that Utah Open Lands is committed to putting a meaningful skin in the game we know this is proven because we did the same thing in Park City and it it became part of their permanent transportation so we're come we're committed to giving up to half of the 75k it's gonna take to do this the remaining funds our vision is they would be shared across partner cities the county other donors etc reflecting the fact that this is a regional destination with regional users we've already received a commitment for up to 5,000 from the
town of Brighton which is pretty cool tiny little town like that they believe in this they they want to get less traffic in the canyon we also just recently applied for a $20,000 grant from the Central Wasatch Commission we've had success working with those guys in the past two so we've got some considerable momentum moving forward on this and we're pretty excited about giving this pilot program a try again I know as a frequent user of going up to Park City to enjoy the beautiful trails that are up there in Bonanza flat I mean it's world we were Park City was the first area to be designated a gold level rider by the International Mountain Bike Association because of the quality of the trails and
it's because the access is for all all users and and just a robust set of trails up there so I know from that aspect because that's my personal experience of using those but again there's picnic tables up there so for people just wanting to go up there and peep some leaves and get some cooler air it's a beautiful thing I know as a starving college student I had a car that wouldn't make it up the canyon so again this makes it equitable for anybody who is a Salt Lake City resident as long as they can get to the meeting place which would be the probably just the base of Big Island with Canyon at the park and right there so I am working I presented to other city councils I learned the hard way that you guys do things a little bit differently that I'm not here to ask
for funding and there's a different way of doing things I am going through the proper channels and actually have talked to the transportation director and got the ball rolling there for that too so really I'm here to tell you about this and yeah get some momentum going and hopefully get some supports through I mean the dream is that a bunch of a bunch of cities pitch in the county pitches in we get some money from central wasatch we chip in 50% we do this pilot program it's amazing we showed data to you TA and maybe it becomes part of our transit as well excellent well thank you so much Josh for your enthusiasm councilmember Dugan yes is awesome forget about a bit of the bike and then I keep on forget about it so could I just go to you know other
places in Park City but this is awesome so you get a free ride shuttle up and then they just dip it different times a day they take the show of it back down correct so using the reservation based system that this this app come I mean the shuttle company has the app so let's say I reserve it 7 a.m. I'm coming back at 3 30 in the afternoon I know that my spots reserved so I can just go fiddle about the company themselves know that they've got a rider that's coming back they're gonna wait 10 minutes or so to make sure that I'm coming back but the hope is that if a rider says hey I'm gonna go down a different way they communicate with the shuttle company to let them know so that opens up another
spot for somebody I'm gonna ride home right yeah yeah awesome and just and there's a goal to increase it to you know a longer weekend Friday Saturday Sunday or Thursday Saturday Sunday to start with right now those are the kind of the pinch points I know as somebody who uses the Canyon for climbing biking hiking all those things they're busy days especially especially the beautiful days like I don't want to be another car that's going up over into the canyon but the reality is when it's 105 degrees down here and I want to go recreate I'm gonna probably do that and and another another thing that I didn't include in this but I oftentimes talk about when it comes to this is there are there is data out in
the world that says two hours in nature is not just good for us physically because we're moving out nature but it's good for our mental health as well and so think of it as a happy constituency is a better constituency they're better able to deal with these other harsh problems that you're hearing about all day long so that they can get their break in nature.
Thank you for this I would love to know if you have any plans or maybe work with you if you don't I'm making sure you target our Westside neighbors so often I know in our schools there's a huge initiative to make sure our young kids from our title one schools get up there my daughter's school just went to a snow camp up in a big cotton with Canyon at Brighton but so often our neighbors are left out by virtue of just not realizing that nature is for them or sure accessible to them so I would love to collaborate on ways to make sure that this isn't just for those who are likely to go but maybe we even improve and increase the likelihood that people who couldn't or wouldn't have gone before take advantage of this. Yeah I mean that's an obviously we're doing the hard part
of getting over to the Canyon and kind of expecting people to get to the the meeting point but I think it's a valid concern to think about making it equitable for for people everywhere I mean if I'm in Cottonwood Heights it's just wow I just get a save on on the pinch point here if I'm way on the Westside I've still got a considerable trip to make I think it's an interesting thing that I can bring back and chat with our team about I at one point lived on six North six West in between the freeway and the railroad tracks and I couldn't get a pizza delivered to that area so I'm very familiar with the pinch points based on where you're at. Just want to double down on what you said about the the
benefits of two hours in nature and what it can do for our whole well-being and just really emphasize that that's so important for decision making so important for all sorts of things so thank you for that. I want to really follow up on Councilor Pietro's comment about communication and you know I hope that with this plan we're able to communicate it to our residents to get the plan out to them to encourage them to take advantage of this and it's a program that seems really exciting to me so thank you. Yeah and I think once we get to the point where we know we've got the the funding set aside and we've made the schedule for this I think we then communicate with you and your newsletter and whatever channels you want to use to get this out to residents will
obviously use our capacity to do that the shuttle service will do theirs you know the town of Brighton is going to do theirs perhaps Sandy and other places who are participating as well. Thank you so much for your presentation. You're very welcome. Thank you. Last thing I'll say which I just feel like I needed to say this at the end of this meeting after all the talk that we've had. The last thing I said at our meeting for the neighborhood the community council that we were doing for Ballpark when they were somebody asked me the question about the Ballpark and I know this doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about but when you're thinking about City and you're thinking about residents the
thing that we have always found as an organization I mean our name is Utah open lands is if you start with some green space if you start with a park if you start with a little bit of nature that is the thing that brings community together and again that two-hour benefit a week of finding that giving them that mental health capacity and that physical thing we have a better constituency in our hands and we're all a little bit happier so thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you everyone. We're gonna move on to item number 10 now as another informational item this is the Council Communications Performance Report we're gonna welcome Whitney Gonzalez Fernandez Council Director of Public Relations and we're also inviting the table Amber Pearson Council Director
of Communications and Systems. It is your time now. Hi Council thank you for having us and giving us the time to talk to you a little bit about communications. I know you've had a lot of information to review today so we'll try to breeze through the high-level findings from our July to December 2025 communications performance. So we can go to the next slide please. So the this by annual Communications Report is one of the items that came out of our communications plan that we presented last spring so it's kind of an accountability measure to just kind of update you all on how we're doing communications as a whole. I know sometimes we also do project specific core events specific reports as well. So
basically the purpose of the report is to try progress toward our three core goals in the communications plan which had a high level our awareness engagement and accessibility and equity. Next slide please. So in a little bit of more detail here awareness means to us increased public awareness and understanding of the Council's role. Engagement is strengthening that community community engagement and participation in local government and accessibility and equity is ensuring transparent timely and accessible communications. Next slide please. So we'll kind of filter the results through those top three goals so up versus awareness. We've seen in terms of website traffic a lot more visibility that
means more people are seeing Council content and using the website as a primary hub of information. So that these two tarts are just a quick glance at the same period July to December 2025 and 2024 so you can see quite a bit of growth there on average our monthly visits to the website are up 28% monthly page views are up 27% and average bounce rate is also up 1%. So a couple of things for bounce rate that just means when someone leaves the website after seeing one page and we think that's because the website is a way that we connect folks to other platforms like the agenda platform so YouTube to watch a council meeting. So yes and then for some of the top most high traffic pages are the agendas of meeting information page to find your
Council member page contact page and then for this period last year it was the 2025 municipal election page because that was happening and then in terms of the bounce rate we're continuing to explore ways that we can encourage people to keep exploring further so maybe highlighting those top pages incorporating some go-back buttons or related content links as well. Next slide please. A little bit more about awareness in terms of social media and email our audiences have grown there as well. You can see that Instagram is our fastest growing social media platform so a lot of our effort is going there right now and then over the chart on the right is the percent growth for each district's email list so this
shows also that more residents are receiving that council information than ever before and we're continuing to adjust our strategy based on what we see. Next slide please. Onto engagement so engagement is the interaction that we see from our residents and engagement increases when content is timely and relevant to them. So our district email newsletter rates are continually like beyond industry benchmarks. I would guesstimate that an industry average open rate for an email is in the 30s and most of ours are very close to 50s or in the mid 50 percent so that means people are interested in information that we're sending to them and they're looking for our emails when they come to their inbox.
The same thing we found for the meeting recaps so in I think that was mid September last year we decided to try changing the subject line and that was a no-go so we won't be changing the subject line because people are looking for that. So these are the types of things that we're keeping an eye on us we continue engaging with the public. Next slide please. So a little bit more on engagement so sorry we are publishing less on social media believe but that has also allowed us to be more strategic about the type of content that we're putting out so we're really trying to lean into a quality over quantity approach on social media. For example on Instagram we posted 23% less but we still saw an 8% increase over the previous year so again leaning into that
intentionality and then making sure that our posts kind of tie into those top three goals that we discussed at the beginning and then these are just some of the most top performing videos most engaged videos again video first is something we are marrying to that quality over quantity approach as you all know by all the times we're asking you to record videos for us.
Next slide please. Another thing that we found has been helpful in terms of engagement and targeting specific residents are paid advertisements so we've been experimenting with social media advertisements and they've proven to be pretty valuable in terms of generating buzz around events getting people to take surveys and just connecting with people who aren't already following us and compared to like traditional advertising and mailers it's way way way cheaper most of the social media campaigns we've run have been about a dollar per result so that's pretty pretty a pretty good deal and then we've also found value in advertising with like hyper local podcast City Cow Salt Lake and then we've also were experimenting and exploring
further YouTube ads including radio as well so more to come on that next slide please and then lastly accessibility and equity we are continuing to this is probably our biggest opportunity is just continuing to develop any efforts that reduce barriers to connect and then also just increase awareness of the the resources that we already have like our Spanish language email newsletters and our ability to use SMS text messaging so for I'm sorry so yeah I also want to highlight that in terms of accessibility and equity we see that as meaning making local government and policy content accessibility accessible and easy to understand for the public for SMS text message this is more easier for folks who
are less digitally connected a big barrier we've seen there is that opt-ins are required so people have to opt in before they can receive our text messages so we are looking out ways to kind of encourage people to opt in and giving them and kind of hints about like what kind of content they could expect from us how many text messages they can expect from us so more to come there and then community events have also been a great place for people to connect and sign up for email lists and other communications so we use some of our print materials that you see shown here to encourage people to connect with us and then I want to highlight the little cartoon that one of our designers made so something as simple
as like how an idea becomes a law so next slide please some of our strategic focuses moving forward so these are you probably heard in ongoing conversations with us already but annual communications planning by district is something that we're hoping to explore with each council member and that planning kind of helps us balance capacity with other outreach things that we have going on throughout the year like budget and CIP and any other major proposals that we are engaging the public on also prioritizing that high-value multi-use content so if a video worked great on Instagram it's probably gonna do well on email it's probably gonna do well on the website so looking at ways that we can kind of spread the love there continuing to look at ways that we can
improve how people use our website whether that's improving navigation or just experimenting with the type of information that we list there continuing the video for strategy really want to prioritize that list building for email and SMS text and then leverage paid campaigns where we think it's relevant and where it's proven successful and that is all I have we will take any questions I just want to take a moment to give both Whitney and Amber a shout out and a huge shout out to the comms team I think coming into the city council role I've just been so impressed by the quality the adaptability the innovation of the team and so just want to say thank you for your for your work and it helps me help support me to do my work around community engagement and connecting with
my neighbors I think one thing I just want to throw out there and you've maybe have heard me talk about this before but taking a cue from the paper of record I eat New York Times which is now a gaming app how can we think about incorporating more gamification into the website even something as simple as a quick you know pop quiz of one two three questions that then drives people to go to other parts of the website and engage more deeply with the thoughtful content you all are putting forward yeah and we did talk about this briefly and we've already outlined a couple of options in terms of that like you know making it a conversation yes we've looked at some crossword options we talked about like
a photo kind of campaign and one more thing was even like crowdsourcing content as well I would like to take a completely different turn now just kidding you guys are killing it you know we have as a council elevated their communication in the last few years by you know tenfold I mean it's incredible the amount of work and how you guys have been not only sharing what we are doing which many people don't know how much how many things we do every day but also you know seeking feedback which is very important for the work that we do trying to get you know direction and correction from our neighbors about the approach that we're taking about the issues and so I really appreciated what I do have a question
and it relates to the website and the website is a little bit the template is a little bit maybe we could say outdated or maybe unflexible or some may say just ugly but you know it wasn't me everybody says it but it was I think they have a a drinking game about that we could you know would it be possible for potentially the council have a different template for our website that helps us while not completely disconnecting from the rest of the city and I'm not trying to like because over holding the city website has a much bigger task and I don't want you know to even mention that to the administration because it seems like a you know very hard to do and I'm sure that they wish also they had you
know improved in pro website but we we have different needs since we are seven elected officials from from different districts and we also have our own style sometimes and all crazy ideas have been you know been sources of some of those in the past so I will love your feedback about you know is that even a possibility and I don't want to like completely disconnect from what the city does as a whole because it's important but I wonder if there is a path there for us to achieve a better platform on our side I think we have a sandbox that we can play in so the header the footer that's all built into the WordPress template as part of the SLCF site we could probably talk to IMS about giving us a
little bit more freedom with embedding apps things like that they're working they have a third party that they work with so we would have to just have conversations with them to see what we could possibly do but we could totally look into that and in my experience with you know some of those platforms you know with enough time and enough funding you know they can develop something that may be a little bit different and unique for you for us in my accomplished some of our needs but I know that there is a lot of people like I mean the numbers that you share about how many people are visiting some of these websites is impressive I mean I know we're talking about thousands of people coming to to look for for information in our side I can even imagine how many
are going to their side either but you know I was just like something to explore yeah and we can definitely discuss further some of the goals that you have in some of the some of the adjustments that something like that would accomplish for us to kind of determine our next steps thank you Council members any more thoughts or questions just want to thank you again for the hard work the only thing that that I would suggest is and it's a suggestion that I've already given to Jen and them to leadership team is I would love to have some content to about like great outcomes that we're doing and it can be like the city as a whole doesn't just need to be the Council but there were some some great examples in the mayor's
city of the city speech that that we also helped create those outcomes and so I think we should we should be pushing out that feedback because I there's so much that people don't realize that we're doing already that aligns with what they would like us to be doing and I want to show them that we're listening so I love that and collaborating with the different departments in the administration has been a really big help and I feel like that would be another great actionable add on and I think building off shape SLC because we can connect those dots so I think that would be a benefit to us I love that feedback Chris thank you.
Mr. Chair if you don't mind sorry just observing how the Council to your point how the Council communications function has evolved over the years I'm just so grateful for the strategic thinking that both of these brilliant ladies have applied to how the Council communicates to constituents because it's not always the same as how the city communicates and the creativity I've seen from this team is just incredible but partnered with the creativity is also this very like systematic look at how we can make sure that the creativity that they're showing is proving itself and so I just really appreciate that unique skill set you guys have so I just wanted to say thank you thank you and thank you all for your
support it really makes a difference and allows us to do our best work I know this that if you can work with us you can work with anybody so I mean your career is secure so thank you so much for the presentation I appreciate it thank you and moving on to item number 11 this is the board appointment for the planning Commission Anna Sullivan is here yes please come in and don't tell us a little bit about you and why do you want to join the planning commission yes hi thank you so much for having me Council my name is Anna Sullivan first I'm a lifelong resident of Salt Lake City I grew up in the ballpark neighborhood I attended West High School I graduated from the University of Utah and I have always held a deep
commitment to my community which has been illustrated through involvement with organizations like Utah Domestic Violence Coalition big brothers big sisters and Circle Salt Lake professionally speaking I have spent the last five years building my career at Utah Housing Corporation where I work as the Housing Credit Allocation Manager in the multifamily department so a lot of what my job entails includes reviewing things reviewing development projects applications for low-income housing tax credits but reviewing things like zoning conditional use permits community revitalization plans and just general project plans my job also includes updating the program rules each year the qualified allocation plan so you know in in conjunction with state and local
goals making sure that we're exhibiting that vision and incentivizing projects for building things the way that the state needs or the community needs and then lastly I was just very interested in this commission personally as pretty much a lifelong West Cider as I was looking into it I noticed that the commission did not have anyone from District 1 or 2 on it currently I live in Rose Park I'm a proud West Cider so I'm hopeful that I can be a voice of representation for the West side. Council members that's how I'm a good job. Thank you for being willing to represent our home I'm your neighbor I live a few blocks down from you is my Christian son not on the funny commission we we do have a very strong
District 1 voice and I'm hoping that he turned off all right well thank you for taking his spot but I'd be happy to connect you with him if you want to hear about some of the things he did I know he ushered us through some really difficult things but welcome to the madness we have the only agricultural land in the city and we are on the forefront so thank you for being willing to step into the fray I appreciate you. Thank you I'm excited. Thank you for representing the West side and you know and maybe help us find members you know for the empty seats we had a few planning commission members moving you know quite fast unfortunately for for multiple reasons but you know we're excited to have you join in and maybe you can help us find some more people from
our community to represent our part. Thank you for joining us. The process goes this way we're gonna have you on the consent agenda for the and the formal meeting later at seven you don't have to attend to be selected the administration will reach out to you with with the next steps after that so today become official it becomes official. Great thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you. Reports from the chair and by chair no you sure okay I you know I am also sure that is a report from the executive director. Thanks Mr. Chair just two brief ones. The first is the Salt Lake City Chamber Board of Governors includes an ex officio position which means like non-voting position on the chamber. In years past the council chair has typically attended however this year the chair and vice chair have offered to any of the council members who are interested in filling that role if there's an interest. The schedule for 2026 is below so just staff let staff know if you're interested in attending those meetings there's not a requirement although sometimes it's helpful to just maintain
relationships with the chamber. So if any of you want to attend please you know let's not know. The next item is just an update on a kind of confirming our template for our council staff reports. So if you turn over this is just to orient. Sorry about that. We're dialing this in so that we have kind of one template no matter which report we're talking about so that council members in the public know where to look in the staff report for which things. Our goal is always to have the most brief and concise information in the first page along with what the goal of the briefing is so that you guys know sort of why we're sitting here today is it informational is it preparing for public hearing we will
have usually a box in the right corner in the tune from line that lists key dates so if there's a set date or if there's a public hearing or if there's an anticipated action date that's where those will be. Then policy questions will be next because that's usually the next most important place for council members to look and this we've gone back and forth as analysts a lot of times is it more important to have the background information to inform the policy questions or vice versa so open to feedback on that but our thinking is that you know sometimes if you especially if you guys are trying to skim for quick information we'll want that for you first but the background information will be there for
the public record so that the public is sure to know sort of where those policy questions are coming from. Can I yeah make a request absolutely I don't know if this would benefit everybody else but I would love more information in like bullet point format because a lot of times I'll read something and I won't know that I need to refer back to it and then when I go back to try to find it and it's like buried in a paragraph it's a lot harder but it's easier for me to organize things if they're because I read these in a very nonlinear way. Okay so that's helpful to know but I don't I don't want you to write it just for me but I think it's helpful to like separate out bullet points. Okay do others feel
similarly should we just try that out for a little while. I think that we you know I wonder if you know and we started on this process because I'm a little silly about a few things and that one is one that I you know I consistency and we're all on the same page is important to me I like that I think I wonder if would you consider highlighting keywords. That'd be great too okay because I think that the paragraph version gives us you know a narrative sometimes that is important. Yeah you don't have bullet point everything but yeah well I wonder if the if Council Admin could merge that idea maybe some of them maybe it kept me in a narrative form and then it could also be a bullet form or it could be
highlighted of keywords and the and the text that separate the sections. Okay so he can you know he's nonlinear way which is not it's not much different than mine so I think it may be useful. Okay well we'll try a few maybe we'll try a new iteration for next time and then just let us know how it's feeling and what works and what doesn't and we'll keep adjusting. The other thing I wanted to mention is that we're going through a similar process to make sure our motion sheet templates are kind of all consistent so that you guys know what to look for in the formal meetings and then we've heard feedback that it's helpful for Council members when you have been requested to take a straw poll in a work session to have those kind of similarly situated to like a motion
sheet and have it be kind of printed out separately especially if it's a complicated issue that we're working through several straw polls. Thankfully we don't have too many of those. But we're working on a template for that as well. Councilwoman Young just texted me she would like if in the reports if there can be links to other Commission or committee hearings that it's already gone through she's saying like if it's gone through planning Commission if they're going to be a hyperlink to the recording. We have had we've had some yes we have asked about that actually for several years are working with Primegov which is where most of our staff reports live has presented a little bit of challenge on
that front but I think it's worth kind of continuing to request that because it seems like it should be possible. I think for the sake of context I think that that will make our lives so much easier so we don't have to dig through another website. The feedback is useful so if you have any other thoughts I think this is a really good time to do it sorry for the LCD but I think it will make us all better if we have this information all clear. Thank you. Thank you.
I don't have we don't have anything else on the agenda so we are done with this meeting so thank you everyone.
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