Sugar House declines dating site's $1.35M offer to change name


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SUGAR HOUSE — A website linking older, richer men with younger, attractive women offered Sugar House $1.35 million to rename the neighborhood "sugardaddie.com" for 10 years, but officials declined the offer.

Sugar House would had to have been renamed SugarDaddie.com, U.S.A., for 10 years, all the city signs would have needed to be changed to reflect the change, and city officials would have had to give the website's owner a key to city during a formal ceremony. The Sugar House Streetcar would had to have been renamed SugarDaddie Streetcar.

"We are very serious about branding the city and giving birth to the first dating site-sponsored city in America," said Steven Pasternack, CEO of SugarDaddie.com in a prepared statement. "We thought it would be a great way to get the word out about our 10-year anniversary and to be a permanent part of the rich history of Salt Lake City."

On Thursday, Salt Lake City officials declined the offer, which has since been rescinded.

Salt Lake City Councilman Soren Simonsen tried not to laugh too hard when asked about renaming Sugar House for a website.

"I can't imagine anybody would take this seriously," Simonsen said.

Sugar House is in his district, but he said renaming buildings, streets, parks, and other public facilities has happened before.


I can't imagine anybody would take this seriously.

–Soren Simonsen


"We recently named the auditorium at the library in honor of Nancy Tessman," he said.

Renaming rights is something the city council talked about earlier this week, before the offer.

"The whole idea of corporate sponsorship in naming rights raises, I think, a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas," he said. "I'm not sure we want to open this up to just naming every city asset to the highest corporate bidder."

This website recently offered Sugar Land, Texas, more than $4 million to change its name. The city turned the offer down. Pasternack has said he will look at other cities like Sugar City, Colo.

Contributing: Stephanie Grimes and Viviane Vo-Duc

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