FLASHBACK 1992: Salt Lakers debate an Olympic development project for the west side 

click to enlarge

In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.

Title: Stick That Oval Where?
Author: Joyce Marder
Date: May 28, 1992

click to enlarge

The citizens filled both the City Council chambers and the hallway to express their strong opinions about Mayor Deedee Corradini's proposal to place an Olympic Speed Skating Oval and baseball stadium downtown. The model placed in front of the crowd represented a six-story, enclosed oval-shaped building which would be placed on the city's near West side. But what the model really represented, is a point of conflict between residents in the area and the people now running city hall.

The block in question sits between 300 South and 300 South, 200 West and 300 West. After a private developer declared bankruptcy and the court battle concluded about a year ago, Salt Lake City's Redevelopment Agency repurchased the property. After another year's worth of public hearings, the city council voted to use redevelopment funds to help build a smaller apartment complex on the block, as well as support service retail, a hotel, and a cultural center. But Salt Lake City's new Mayor wants to stop that process and begin her own.

Pioneer Park is located across the street to the west. It is home to Salt Lake City's homeless and transient populations. For some it's a place to be during the day when the homeless shelter closes. Others sleep there; many get drunk.

Most people who work downtown or own homes in Salt Lake City avoid this part of town. But not everyone.

click to enlarge

• Joel Severson

Thomas Parrish lives in the La France Apartments, which are owned by the Greek Church. When Parrish learned of the mayor's proposal to build the Oval and baseball stadium, he put letters under his neighbors' doors encouraging them to attend Wednesday's public hearing. "The people who live in these neighborhoods are used to being bullied," he said. "The process being pushed aside is democracy—protection for the homeless, the low income."

Parrish says his street fills with parked cars whenever the Delta Center hosts an event; two events would cause a major traffic jam. He does not want a sports complex in his neighborhood. "The general public's first reaction is, great something's happening," says Parrish. "But they don't realize it's a massive project and we might be squeezed out. We understand our apartment building is an investment, not a charity." Parrish lived in the LaFayette Apartments before that site became a parking lot for a new office building. "People go into politics to help their constituency. It's clear which people Corradini has gone into politics to help."

Artspace is located on the block north of Pioneer Park. This converted warehouse provides studio space and living quarters for 32 artists and their families. Some 100 people patronize the shops or use the classroom spaces each day. The southern view from the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral and La France Apartments is of Block 49. The fate of this area has taken on a particular importance to the artists, students, workers, and retirees who live here, as well as the business owners in the neighborhood and their customers. Throughout the many public meetings and hearings over the past 10 years, the underlying theme has been to preserve and develop the neighborhood.

Until the mayor's announcement, everyone agreed that developing a neighborhood meant providing places to live, shop, visit, gather and play (both night and day) on and around block 49. The block would contain 125 middle/low income apartments, a 200 room motel, retail shops, a small grocery store, and an as yet unspecified "cultural center." What would happen next is that the city council would have decided which structures, if any, to build with public monies. However, a call from the mayor four weeks ago put the process on hold.

The relative merits of any plan do not build buildings. Money does. Money is available in the form of a $3.7 million commitment from the Utah Sports Authority to build an Olympic Oval somewhere along the Wasatch Front. Meanwhile, a committee of bankers, lawyers and business people appointed by the mayor had decided the city needed a new baseball stadium to replace Derks Field. According to Executive Assistant to the Mayor, Thom Dillon, Mayor Corradini and her executive staff got together to "brainstorm" and find places to put both buildings. They settled on Blocks 48 and 49. The mayor submitted her plan to the City Council.

For the time being, the Greek Church has no plans to sell its property in the area, according to Pete Souvall, director of long-range planning. But he confirmed the properties were purchased as an investment. Of equal importance, says Souvall, the church bought surrounding lands to "protect its environment."

The baseball stadium seating is oriented so that the sound of cheering crowds would be clearly heard by everyone inside the church.

"It would be devastating to the serenity of our services," says Souvall. He also wonders how his parishioners will find parking if the Oval attracts its 1,000 people per day capacity crowd. "It is the religious center for our community," says Souvall. "Our church has the same significance as the Mormon Temple has to the Mormons, the synagogues have to the Jewish community; the Cathedral of the Madeline to the Catholics. Not any of them would want to see these facilities across from their churches."

The homeless don't want those facilities built on top of their home, either. At the public hearing, Robert Tillack identified himself as having recently been homeless and expressed "outrage" at the city for entertaining the idea of taking the park away from its current users.

Housing and Homeless Coordinator for Utah Issues, Steve Erickson says, "this is a neighborhood and people live here. The homeless live in the neighborhood and Pioneer Park is the neighborhood park." Erickson says the mayor's plan gives precedence to the Olympics and its supporters over the people who already live in the city.

Stephen Goldsmith, executive director of Artspace, says that the city should direct its efforts toward attracting new users to the park. An adequate supply of electricity would enable the park to accommodate the Utah Arts Festival and other art and music events, says Goldsmith. "The arts, the artists, are city builders. Their work goes beyond the studio and can enhance the quality of life and have a tremendous role in economic development." What's needed, says Goldsmith, is more housing in the area. He has plans to convert two additional warehouses into art studio-living-retail space. Goldsmith says that by building more housing in the area—creating more of a neighborhood—people will reclaim the park and patronize the shops.

Art gallery owner Dolores Chase agrees. "It's hard to develop a safe and interesting neighborhood when all you have is people walking from the liquor store to the shelter," she says. "Salt Lake is a canyon of steel and glass. Let's not throw an oval in the middle of an already boring city." Chase says cafes and pastry shops, ethnic retail stores and the life, built along pedestrian-oriented lanes, will attract pedestrians to her gallery at 260 South 200 West. "The oval would kill this opportunity to create an intriguing city."

There are those who think a sports complex might accomplish those goals equally well. If Utah gets the Olympics, according to the mayor's plan, Salt Lake's speed skating oval may evolve into a sports complex which could include a pool, jacuzzi, tennis courts, and driving range on land inside the track. In the summer, the track could be used for rollerblading, bicycling and jogging.

Mark Wren, regional manager of Kahler Corp., owner of the Hilton Hotel, favors the mayor's proposal. Looking at the city from the perspective of a hotel manager, Wren says the city needs restaurants and activities within walking distance of its many hotels. If the oval were to become a sports complex, it would give tourists or conventioneers who come to Salt Lake a reason to stay longer.

"Hotels play a major part in the tax base in this state," says Wren, adding that hotels employ many people in many capacities. "Let's turn an eyesore into an opportunity. The way you keep a downtown safe is to keep a lot of people downtown." He adds that that is not to ignore the homeless, but rather to seek solutions. "I've met with the mayor and have been impressed. [This plan] seems well thought out. I'd hate to see things done too slowly."

After Wednesday night's meeting, the City Council voted not to make a hasty decision. Furthermore, the Council decided to actively consider the Oval proposal in order to meet the Sports Authority's May 27 deadline, but to postpone further discussion on the baseball stadium.

The council passed a resolution to propose two sites—Block 49 and Park & Recreation land near 5th South 1900 West—to the Sports Authority with the understanding that the city would continue to study both choices. Part of that process would include gathering public input.

If the mayor's proposal prevails, a number of cultural organizations that had designs on block 49 will have to look elsewhere. Lou Tong, Director for the Office of Polynesian/Asian Affairs, conceived the idea of "Asia City" three years ago. Architecturally like San Francisco's "China Town," Asia City would incorporate all the ethnic Asians into its cultural center with permanent and traveling displays, meeting facilities and a performance space. Tong says he was disappointed when he learned of the oval proposal. However, if necessary, his organization will seek another site.

While some people may have perceived that nothing was being done, in fact the city undertook a careful and deliberate process, inviting all parties to have a say before the council voted. All those who favor the original plan argue that the business failure of one private developer in no way diminishes its validity. Margaretta Wooley, AIA R/UDAT coordinator, says, "You don't plan a city for what's happening at the moment, but what you want it to become." The business and hotel owners say they have watched the block deteriorate and the panhandling population grow for 20 years while the city planned.

There are those who want southwest downtown to be a community and those who want it to be a tourist attraction. And everyone is guessing: Will Utah host the Olympics or not? Can our city attract a Triple A baseball team? Will entrepreneurs occupy whatever retail space is built and be able to operate profitable businesses? Should the city use public monies to build a cultural center or find a private organization to do it? The outrage expressed at the public hearing was from people who felt they had been asked, taken the time to form opinions, and then their answers were ignored.

Westside Dumping ... Historically Speaking
By Tom Walsh

It was 1966, and the Japanese community didn't fight the placement of the Salt Palace in their downtown neighborhood.

So, things started happening real fast.

Kuniko Terasawa, the publisher of the Utah Nippo newspaper, was setting type when demolition contractors came to her door to tear the building down.

Her daughter, Haruko Moniyasu, says her mother never received notice.

"The contractors told her she wasn't supposed to be in the building," Moriyasu remembers, "and things soon started falling down from the ceiling."

Most of the neighbors had gotten a flyer that told them they only had a month to get out; not much notice for families who had been doing business there for decades, some since the turn of the century.

The people in charge were moving pretty quickly to level the Japanese neighborhood that centered on First South, between West Temple and 300 West.

It was known as "Little Tokyo" to some, Japanese Town or just J-Town to the immigrants and the next generations. It was a centralized cluster of shops, noodle houses, fish markets and produce stands. It was a meeting place, and for the immigrants it was an island in a sea of white people.

"You would always shop in the same two or three stores," Moriyasu says. "At the Aloha Fountain, you could get a soda or ice cream and talk to your friends. It gave us a sense of place, a sense of security."

Retired Judge Raymond Uno used to hang out there in his younger days. "If you said, 'hey, see you at J-Town,' everyone knew where to go; we'd find everyone down there."

Moriyasu's family wasn't aware of any public meetings about the Salt Palace placement. Judge Uno says many Japanese were led to believe that the Salt Palace was going to be placed at the Fairgrounds, or on 21st South where the Salt Lake County Complex sits.

But the Salt Palace Board of Directors voted for the current site. The LDS Church owned seven acres of the J-Town property and gave the land to the County at the price of one dollar a year.

Judge Uno thinks the LDS Church wanted the huge facility placed in the Japanese neighborhood, and the residents were powerless to stop it. The highly visible minority neighborhood was just two blocks from Temple Square.

There was no democracy for the few.

"We don't know who made the final decisions," Uno said, "but we can see how it's benefitted the LDS Church. But why destroy our neighborhood? Why didn't they go in the other direction [to the northeast] and ruin that neighborhood? We didn't have economic power, so forget about the little people. It reminds me of what's happening now with the Oval. All of a sudden, there's a plan and it's a done deal."

So, has there been a conscious effort by city leaders to dump on the Westside immigrant communities? History answers yes.

Our city fathers were facing a "touchy" problem at the turn of the century: what to do with a highly visible, downtown prostitution district on Regency Street (next door to the current site of the Salt Lake Tribune). The downtown businessmen wanted it moved.

Guess where? No, not the Eastside. Yep, the Westside.

In 1908, Salt Lake City Mayor John Bransford initiated what might be called the forerunner of redevelopment agencies to handle this problem. He brought in Ogden's best known Madam, Belle London, for some consulting on the prostitution problem. They formed the Citizen's Investment Company to buy up a city block and then build parlor houses and small crude "cribs" for one hundred women to work out of. The Company's plan was to centralize business and put a wall around it. It became known as the "Stockade." The Salt Lake City Police told the prostitutes in town they had the choice of getting out of town, going to jail, or going to work at the "Stockade."

And so, where did the Company place this project? Right in the middle of Greek Town.

click to enlarge

Salt Lake City historian John McCormick writes, "The reasoning of the Mayor and others was that the foreign element had already destroyed the area. Establishing prostitution there would not harm the area and could even be rationalized as catering to the 'immoral foreigners.'"

These "foreigners" operated 55 businesses in a two block area on West Second South from 4th to 6th West. It included Greek boarding houses, restaurants and coffee houses where the young men who worked with pick and shovel 10 to 12 hours a day could relax. Now, the city leaders put a huge whore house in the middle of their neighborhood.

McCormick says political corruption entered into the site selection process. "The Mayor owned property across the street from the stockade. After it was built, the Mayor put up a building where he rented his bottom floor to Greek businessmen; the top floor rooms were rented to prostitutes to live in."

And oh, by the way, the architect and contractor on that building was a member of the city council—an amazing coincidence. From that point on, West Second South was labeled as Salt Lake City's Red Light District.

The immigrant communities and their rich cultural heritage dissolved in the 1930s and '40s due to social pressures and the immigrant's own upward mobility. But, how much of that is due to forced displacement by city leaders in the name of progress?

The Japanese Church of Christ, The Salt Lake Buddhist Temple and the Multi-Ethnic Senior Citizen's High Rise are the cultural remnants in the old neighborhood. But not for long.

Plans for the Salt Palace expansion indicate these, too, will be mowed down or moved out, in the name of progress.

Haruko Moriyasu sadly says that the Salt Palace has completely dispersed the Japanese community. A once-thriving ethnic area has been wiped out forever.

"There was a major presence of Japanese in the downtown area," Moriyasu said. "They are not there anymore. You can read into that what you want."