Utah Heritage Foundation

As you may know, what is being dubbed the Hub District has long been known as the Warehouse District.  That name even dates back to before The Gateway was even a thought!  The Hub District, an area with SL Central Station (formerly known as the Intermodal Hub) has been going through a planning process to give agency and government officials ideas as to what the future should look like.

As described by Envision Utah, the Depot District is one of six key locations identified in the Wasatch Choice for 2040 (WC2040). WC2040 is the land-use and transportation “Vision” for Salt Lake, Weber, Davis and Utah Counties, developed by elected officials and the public to improve our quality of life as our region experiences dramatic growth.  Implementing the Vision will allow us to absorb a 65% population growth (1.4 million additional residents) over the next 30 years, while enhancing our economy, protecting our beautiful natural areas, providing more housing and transportation choices, saving money and energy, and improving our air quality and health.

 

Utah Heritage Foundation commends The Spectrum for its editorial on July 18, 2011 urging that school buildings be more energy efficient.  But why stop there.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation has been pointing out for years that the greenest buildings are often those that are already built. 

In a planning meeting for the re-use of Denver’s Emerson School, consultant Jim Dinola, a principal with Green Building Services in Portland, Oregon noted that the energy efficiency of older schools can be improved by doing some of the simple things homeowners do to make old houses more efficient.  These include insulating the attic, tightening windows and doors to eliminate leaks, and making thermostats operable (so that rooms are not heated to 85 degrees while sitting empty overnight, for example). Other energy savings will require more substantial investment, such as the overhaul of the school’s heating and cooling systems.  These retrofits often compare favorably with the cost of new construction.

Older schools in established neighborhoods like East Elementary in St. George, Utah (photo courtesy Washington County Historical Society) can usually be reached safely by pedestrians, reducing traffic and pollution from vehicles.  A recent Preservation Nation blog gave a way to measure the walkability of schools and their neighborhoods using the Active School Neighborhood Checklist (ASNC).  The checklist was born out of the federal Safe Routes To School program. The goal of SRTS is to make it safer and easier for children to walk and bicycle to school. 

Renowned for its painted graphics and unique style, the Utah Ice & Storage Warehouse at the corner of 300 South and 600 West was demolished on Monday, December 20, 2010 after a demolition permit was issued to the property owner, Nicholas Food Company.

Built c. 1880, the warehouse was once probably ten times its last size as home to one of the city’s largest facilities for the cold storage of meat, produce, and ice as it came in by rail and distribute throughout the valley by horse-drawn carriage and later by truck.

Unfortunately, the historic warehouse had a future role to play in the emerging Hub District.  As planned by the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City, the district was to have the few historically unique buildings that remain in the two block area between UTA Central Station and the Rio Grande Depot, to which Utah Ice & Storage could have played a key role in the revitalization of an area otherwise desolate of character.  The RDA owns two buildings and has made plans to incorporate them into new development, but Utah Ice & Storage was the one that was privately owned and is now gone.  It’s looking more and more like that corner will be left up to the reinvention of urban design rather than recalling any piece of railroad history for the Hub District.

Who said that economic times were slow?  Certainly not in Utah County.  You can witness rapid investment priming the pump of Utah’s economy all over Utah County, and especially in downtown Provo where the cranes are rising and trucks are hauling.

Unfortunately, one of the things the trucks are hauling is demolition debris from several older and historic buildings in Provo’s downtown historic district.  Yes, it was certainly time for some of these to probably go as they had been underutilized, unsupported by economic development programs for years, and thus neglected.  But there was still some charm and character in their scale and features and thus their contribution provided some good nature to being there.  Even in the last round of discussions with the Landmarks Commission, there was acknowledgment that in the future the city cannot allow contributing buildings to be altered, thus making them non-contributing buildings while they are listed in the local historic district or they will be de-listed and demolished just like these buildings.

So what the historic district is getting in place of handsome brick and stone, arched windows with lintels and keystones, Art Moderne and Victorian Commercial styles is glass, glass, and more glass.  On the North side, the Utah County convention center will take nearly an entire block and include a small plaza, but not include an entrance door along the entire stretch of 200 West, even though it looks like it does.

Today is demolition day at the West Jordan Sugar Factory.

Demolition will clear the way for an office building for the Third District Court, which is adjacent to the sugar factory.

Built in 1914, the complex of three buildings and two silos was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.  Since 2003, Utah Heritage Foundation has been supporting the work of the local Sugar Factory Committee toward rehabilitation of the complex.  Recently though, a political change of perspective has been led by Mayor Melissa Johnson, decrying the buildings as “an eyesore” and stating that in her opinion “the buildings aren’t architecturally significant.”

Earli

This week on the 100 block of State Street in downtown Salt Lake City, the Radio City Lounge (147 S. State St.) and its neighboring two story commercial building were demolished to make way for a reported UTA bus transfer station.  Out of historic context for several decades since the construction of the commercial building on 200 South and State Street and the Wallace Bennett Federal Building in the 1970s, the buildings have long been rumored to be targets for demolition, not preservation.  Now we have more space for traffic, not businesses.  And not on streets where downtown traffic should exist, but on what was (or maybe still is) private property.

The Radio City Lounge had a great history as a historic bar in a historic building that should be recognized.  In a town that has a short and unknown history otherwise of LGBT establishments, the Radio City Lounge was the standout.  There are certainly others that have come after, and we will republish that information here soon.  But let's remember Radio City Lounge when we need to rally to save the next important LGBT site in Utah.

Read the article Radio City Lounge Closes in Q Salt Lake.

See a photo of the neon sign on the building before demolition.