Learnings from a recent zoning issue I've been involved in

Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City, the park for which I am on the board, has an anomaly on its border.  

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Demolition crews take down the last of the old Sizzler restaurant by Sugar House Park in Salt Lake City on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

There is one piece of property that's private.  In 1942, when the site was the state prison, the parcel at the corner of 1300 East and 2100 South was sold off for private use.  It's just shy of an acre in size

Over the decades it's been a gas station, dry cleaner, and restaurant, among other uses.

There is tightly defined higher density mixed use zone across the street.  But this site has always been classified as low density and "neighborhood serving."

The proposed gas station at the corner of Sugar House Park was garish in design and posed traffic and other issues.

A few years ago there was an attempt by the once extant Kum and Go convenience store chain to open on the site.

It required a special exception use permit because it was a gasoline station (there are gas stations in this zoning classification) but ultimately it wasn't approved ("Neighbors aren’t all happy with what’s planned for the old Sizzler site in Sugar House," "Can neighbors actually stop that gas station near Sugar House Park?," Salt Lake Tribune).  

Surprisingly, the firm didn't make an offer on the property contingent on approvals (developers call these "entitlements") they signed a lease upfront.  So they, and then the successor company (Maverik, based in Salt Lake as it happens) were stuck with it.

Rendering of a seven-story hotel proposed for the western edge of Sugar House Park

Before that particular proposal and afterwards a hotel was proposed possibly involving a land swap with the park.  

Unfortunately at the time, the president(s) of the Park board were not in the habit of disclosing in detail their conversations with various principals on various matters such as this, so I was never a party to those discussions.

Because people don't want the property to remain a permanent eyesore--it's been vacant since covid, which led to the closing of the then Sizzler restaurant on the site--and those discussions, the lessee and underlying property owner--who has zero interest in selling the city to the park, and has made this clear many times--thought a hotel would likely be approved by the board and the community.

But for it to work out financially, it required an upzone.  One of the reasons I argued against the upzone is that the property owner was intransigent, valuing the property as if it were part of the Sugar House Town Center Mixed Use district, which now allows for buildings up to 150 feet tall.  But that wasn't the zoning, which is for low scale buildings and neighborhood serving uses.  

And the residents and stakeholders who worked on creating the community master plan, which called for density in an area of the city that didn't have it, were very clear about tight geographic boundaries.  The east side of 1300 East, where the park is, was considered a hard border against intensification, as it basically served as the gateway to the low density residential neighborhoods north and east of the site.

I argued that an upzone would reward the property owner's intransigence.

The board ended up being split.  I was decidedly in the no camp, because the proposal for a 90 foot tall building at that particular site, appeared to be in the park, and would forever reshape the viewshed from many directions.  But it was close.  The government representatives had to abstain as did one board member, so it was a tie, 3-3.

The developer continued his quest, with various community groups, seeking approvals.  In Salt Lake, community councils are neighborhood groups designated to address development proposals in their geography.

The community generally was against the proposal, but a small and vocal minority favored the project, seeing it as a neighborhood benefit, and that ground floor uses like a cafe would support the park.

The three key points in the anti-argument.  (1) A tall hotel would forever alter the park's viewshed both outside and within the park. (2) It would be placed in a manner that appears as if it is part of the park, a commercial use within a public, civic asset.  (3) The zoning for the site is low scale, under 35 feet in height, and classified as community serving.  A hotel does not categorize as neighborhood serving and requires an upzone to make financial sense.

No major urban park nor urban square in the US has tall commercial buildings seemingly located within its grounds.  Sure there can be institutional-civic uses like the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the edge of Central Park, but tall and commercial buildings are across the street--definitely leveraging proximity to the park for profit, but still apart.

Central Park, New York City

Prospect Park, Brooklyn 

Not a lot of tall buildings, but they are on the edge, across the street from the park

Humboldt Park, Chicago

Union Square, San Francisco

How the building would have related to the park.  Note that the dimensions of the building in their renderings were inaccurate.  The actual massing is shown as lighter shading.  I argued it would reshape negatively the viewshed within the park, not just outside of the park, and that this was the most important decision concerning the park since it was founded 70 years ago.

What happened?  City Council voted no.  In Salt Lake the planning department makes recommendations to the planning commission concerning zoning changes, which trigger public input.  The Commission approved the change, with specious reasoning, completely ignoring (as did the planning department) that the request called for a significant height increase outside of the Town Center district.  

It also provided for a further upzone than what was approved by a recent city-wide upzoning--to support housing and transit oriented development--without that change having taken effect, and without supporting housing or TOD.  (The planning department justified the changes based on tax revenue and job increases, and some minimal community benefits.)

But the final arbiter is the City Council, which scheduled a set of hearings.

We ran a pretty tight campaign, focused on the "outside" -- getting residents to make their voices heard and to contact other representatives and the "inside" of working to get a Council majority to vote against the change.  

Given my experience with these kinds of matters in DC and elsewhere, I was adamant that as many of the people testifying at hearings had to have message discipline, ideally focusing on one element of the project in detail, rather than a mish-mash of opposing points, which tend to typify community member testimony and diffusing the message.  It turns out afterwards, a couple Councilmembers mentioned specifically they were surprised by the quality of the public comments.

When it came to vote a couple weeks after the hearing, the City Council voted, unanimously, not to approve the upzone ("SLC Council seals fate of hotel plans at Sugar House Park," SLT).  I knew we had at least four votes, but I was surprised and pleased by the unanimity.

Next steps.  I joked the vote was a beginning.  A group of us have been working on an alternative proposal that calls for a profitable use of the property, with park and civic functions as well, as a public-private partnership.  Hopefully, the lessee and the property owner will give it consideration.  We'll see.

Interesting learnings.  Discussions about this property and what to do with it have been going on for about 4 years.  These are the things that surprised me about the various views and opinions expressed.

1.  People don't understand land use context.  The property is relatively unique in that it is embedded within a park.  Most people weren't against a hotel in the greater neighborhood, just not at that particular site.  But so many of the arguments people made in favor or about the opposition lacked a sense of context.

E.g. one person equated the project with opposition to a Walmart years before.  But it was nothing like that, and the Walmart merely replaced a Kmart.  

Another to an intersection two miles away that had a couple of tall buildings--because it is abutting the University of Utah campus.  In fact I pointed out that his statement actually proved mine, because the area between the park and that intersection is all low density residential (plus a college) demonstrating how the "park corner" is a gateway to neighborhood scaled development, not intense commercial development.

Yet another equated opposition to another low scale development site in the neighborhood.  Frankly, why I agreed with him that opposition to that project, was groundless, the site is completely different, one corner of an intersection which had development on all corners, and was low density--I think the new buildings are no more than three stories, not seven stories, and there definitely isn't a park there.

Ironically then, the height of that project is about what the current zoning allows.  So in some way it was a better example for the opposition.

2.  This is probably the same point, but they don't seem to be very good at making "like for like" comparisons.  Tall and commercial versus short and civic was an elusive concept.  To them a building is a building, and there is no difference between public or private use, or its size and placement.

3.  Most people didn't express much awareness of the concept of civic assets and public goods.  Yes, the property is private.  The park is not, it's public. But it's reasonable for citizens to want a compatible use on that site, even if privately owned. (This is an example of the "social contradiction" of property discussed in Planning the Capitalist City, when property owners have to accept public oversight and input if they want the state to regulate against the possibility of nuisance.)

4.  Many people don't understand the criteria on which zoning decisions are made.  Because the city is experiencing growth and intensification, many said "oh, the Council will agree, look at everything else happening in the city.  That's what they do.  They are stooges of developers" etc.

This was even stated in a brief piece in the Salt Lake City Weekly:

And now, because the city is anxious about the coming onslaught of people—and peripherally about housing affordability—it is fielding criticism over plans to build a seven-story hotel. The developer is seeking a zoning change that supporters believe will bring jobs and somehow “new recreational opportunities,” per KSL. There will be parking and traffic challenges, and one notable concern centers around the park’s birds potentially crashing into a 90-foot-tall building. But if history is an indicator, Sugar House—once a walkable, streetcar suburb turned suburban shopping area—will continue to grow up and out.

It wasn't about history.  The writer doesn't seem to understand that zoning is a legal construct and it dictates what can and cannot be built.  Sure plenty of sites within Salt Lake have been intensified.  It's not done willy nilly even if they think so, but through a path determined by the particular zoning classifications of those sites.  It's not just doing x because then are beholden to developers.  There is a set of criteria outlining a legal path for making such decisions.

(Fwiw, the City Council has tended to not give immediate approvals to zoning and upzone changes when the land use of adjacent parcels is so different.  This was such a case.)

Buildings on the west side of 1300 East are a mish mash of one story fast food and quick service restaurants like Olive Garden or Wendy's and commercial spaces up to about 6 stories tall--although the zoning allows for taller buildings.   

It is understood over time that the current retail taking up much of that district is likely to be rebuilt as mixed use and intensified.

OTOH, there is very clear evidence (planning history and decision making) that the intent of the Sugar House Master Plan was to make a hard boundary on the east between the west and east sides of 1300 South--one side dense, one side not.

Relatedly, lots of pro-development people argued the private property owner could do whatever she wanted, and set the property's value independent of the zoning classification.

While that is what the property owner tried to do, it didn't happen.  Early on in those discussions I made that point, that the same type of property across the street--a Chevron station--was valued at 1/3 of what the property owner claimed for their site.  Otherwise they were identical sites, except for the zoning, and the Chevron site lies in the Town Center district and could be developed into a multi-story complex--it was worth much more.

In fact, had the hotel developer tried to develop that site instead, the zoning there would have allowed for the use, with limited to zero grounds for opposition.