SALT LAKE CITY — After taking public input on closing off Rio Grande Street and signing it off to state officials to manage for the next two years, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said Wednesday she's got a clear "green light."

"It feels like I have significant support to move forward on this closure from this community," the mayor said after a public forum Wednesday night at an empty Gateway store front at 116 S. Rio Grande St., where about 50 people listened to city and state officials describe the street's future.

Biskupski said she's considering signing a 30-day lease agreement Thursday.

"We'll probably take quick action," she said.

The street was closed to vehicle traffic last week, but Biskupski wanted to take input on a more comprehensive closure, one that would only allow people seeking homeless services into its bounds. A longer term closure — until June 2019 when the Road Home shelter is slated to shut its doors — will then be up to the City Council to decide during a Sept. 19 meeting.

More than 1,300 people had weighed in on an online survey as of Wednesday, and the majority expressed support for the street closure to create a "safe space" between the shelter and Catholic Community Services facilities.

About 78 percent of respondents said they felt a temporary closure of the street would "increase the safety of those seeking homeless services," while 76 percent said it would "benefit the large community."

House Speaker Greg Hughes has pressured Biskupski over the last few weeks to close the street and start building that safe space as soon as possible as part of Operation Rio Grande — the multijurisdictional effort to root out crime and drug dealing from the people experiencing homelessness who go to the area for services.

"If we do not create that safe space, we will lose the ground we've gained," Hughes said at the forum Wednesday.

Related:

Segment of Rio Grande Street closed to traffic; S.L. seeking input on 2-year closure

A segment of Salt Lake City's most infamous street was shut down to vehicle traffic Friday — the product of several days of quarreling between Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski and Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes.

The zone, after it's in the hands of the state, will likely be fenced off to the general public and require some sort of ID card to gain access, said Jonathon Hardy, division director for housing and community development for the Utah Department of Workforce Services.

Though Matthew Minkevitch, executive director of the Road Home, and Matthew Melville, director of homeless service for Catholic Community Services, both expressed support for the safe zone at Wednesday's forum, at least one service provider has concerns.

Glenn Bailey, executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, said the fenced off area and an ID system "comes with all kinds of constitutional questions."

"We're really concerned about people's civil rights," Bailey said. "Closing a half block of Rio Grande might be a good idea in and of itself, but when it's linked to this whole ID issue, having a special ID... then we start to stumble on some civil rights issues."

He said a system that requires "a picture, a bar code and thumb print" might scare some people away who would otherwise want to access services, but would rather not encounter law enforcement or other authorities managing the area.

"Homeless people have civil rights," Bailey said. "This seems to be getting lost in the ongoing hysteria that has become Operation Rio Grande."

Biskupski said, however, city and state officials haven't quite decided exactly what the ID system will look like.

"I'm not sure where we will land on the ID card, we're not quite there yet, but there is a lot of ongoing discussion about it," Biskupski said.

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