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As Salt Lake City leaders look to future economic development, a piece of our past may be the best catalyst.
They recently returned from visits to Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. They discovered there's a lot to be learned from those cities' successes and mistakes. Transit seemed to be the key to downtown economic development.
Can the city turn a blighted building with busted windows into an economic engine? More than ever before, city leaders are sure of it and think it starts with mass transit.
Mayor Ralph Becker, members of the Salt Lake City Council, Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders went on a three-city tour put on by the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City (RDA).
Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce President Lane Beatty said, "They are driving economic development with transit. It's not economic development driving transit. It's just the reverse of that."
More specifically, they're using the streetcar or trolley. It's different than TRAX and FrontRunner. It's slower, with stops every block. In Portland, the streetcar delivered.
Mayor Becker said, "It is an incredible inducement for development. Lay the tracks, and development follows immediately is what we saw place after place."
Here's the Portland return on streetcar investment: The city has spent $88 million on track construction. It now has $3.5 billion in private investment along the line. More than 10,000 new housing units and 5.4 million square feet of commercial space have been constructed within two blocks of the line.
Salt Lake used to have 145 miles of trolley track in the city. The idea is to build something similar again downtown. Already there's discussion of streetcars on an abandoned corridor around 2300 South.
Salt Lake City Council member J.T. Martin said, "We had a very comprehensive system, and I look to the day we can replace that. That is the future."
There are many steps ahead. The City Council will look at long-term transportation proposals soon. As for financing, the mayor says a system can be built with federal funding. He says special assessments along a corridor can be done without raising federal taxes.
E-mail: jboal@ksl.com
