Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Marc Giauque ReportingA lot of what used to be prime office space will soon be housing thousands of students and faculty at LDS Business College as the school moves from South Temple to the Triad Center.
It's happening as downtown deals with a suprising lack of office space, something many say is a product of a good economy and improving transportation.
It wasn't long ago when people like Mike Richmond remembers firms were fleeing downtown, scared out perhaps by pr-Olympic Trax and freeway construction. Now, he says, you just have to look at the prime office space vacancy rate to see a huge change.
"We're down to 1.9%, which is an extremely low, somewhat of an unhealthy number for downtown Salt Lake."
Unhealthy, that is, if you're in an office already and need room to expand. Richmond is with Commerce CRG, one of the Salt Lake office's real estate brokers. He says people are already vying for space that will be opened up when Fidelity Investments moves near the Gateway.
"There are a number of firms right now that are already negotiating leases with landlords to take large chunks of that space once it's vacated, which is something we haven't seen in a long time."
Another new thing-- a high rise office tower planned for 222 South Main. The goal to lease the top floor at 30-dollars per square foot. That can add up to millions.
So is it good news for downtown?
"To see that much development in housing, in office and in retail is just so encouraging."
David Oka of Salt Lake's Redevelopment Agency credits the economy, good planning, and promised investments.
"We see that there is going to be close to 1.5 billion dollars in downtown."
That includes money from the LDS Church to redevelop downtown malls. But they're not the only redevelopers at work.
"Developers are coming in and acquiring older, more obsolete buildings in an effort to retrofit those, bring them up to modern day design and code."
All fine during the day, but will there ever be enough to sustain more retail and restaurant business? Oka thinks so, especially as more people begin to live downtown.
