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Samantha Hayes ReportingThe Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce wants to get your attention and your input when it comes to downtown development.
You may have noticed the chamber's mass marketing campaign that kicked off today, highlighting its own vision for Salt Lake City and asking for yours.
It's been a while since the spotlight has be redirected to downtown development in Salt Lake City. The Chamber says in the next five years more than 1.5 billion dollars will be invested in a 10 block area of downtown, so things will be changing. Business leaders want the public to help create this visionary blueprint.
Usually you hear about it one project at a time-- enlarging the Salt Palace Convention center, expanding the Gateway Shopping center, on 350 South and 200 east a Condo Complex will be finished next year. Together these projects are changing the feel and the face of Salt Lake City.
Bobbi Handwerger, Cincinnati native: "It's growing and a lot is changing activities, things to do."
And all those things makes living and working in a city good, but the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce wants to know what would make Utah's Capital an ideal place to be. In a major advertising campaign the Chamber is calling on the public as they map out a vision for downtown development.
Lane Beattie, Chamber of Commerce President: "The building blocks of our vision include a downtown that is beautiful, prosperous, community oriented and green."
Their big idea is a signature building, a Utah World Trade Center on the southern end of downtown. Creating ethnic districts, like a a Greektown and Little Italy, have also being talked about. For Kim Tiernan an emphasis on the arts is important.
Kim Tiernan, Salt Lake City: "More accessible artworks, bigger art galleries, just more cultural things to do."
The Campaign is called Downtown Rising and Shawn Houston, who came to Salt Lake City from New York, seems to share that vision.
Shawn Houston, New York native: "If I could plan the city, build up, because it keeps everything close by."
