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SALT LAKE CITY — A proposal to turn Salt Lake Community College’s Meadowbrook campus into a commercial or office development and possibly affordable housing took another step forward Friday when the Utah State Board of Regents authorized the college to lease the 10.2-acre site to the Boyer Co.
The 40-year lease would provide ongoing revenue to the college but the development would not be branded with SLCC signage. Rather, the college would move into a “landlord situation,” SLCC President Deneece Huftalin told a board committee last week.
Academic and training programs established at the Meadowbrook campus, 218 W. 3900 South, have largely been moved to other sites, including SLCC’s Westpointe Workforce Training and Education Center, which opened in 2018.
However, the Utah Refugee Education and Training Center remains at the site, where it has occupied space for about five years. The center was created in a partnership among the Utah Department of Workforce Services, SLCC and Utah State University.
Interim Utah Commissioner of Higher Education David Woolstenhulme asked Huftalin about the future plans for the refugee center.
Although the college has not entered a formal agreement with Boyer Co. because it has been awaiting approval from the board of regents and Utah State Building Board, Huftalin said preliminary discussions indicate that the center could be housed in the office building. The center’s lease would then shift from the college to Boyer Co.
“My sense is that will actually give them more space and better space. Right now it’s these old warehouses that have been converted to office space. I think they would get either the same square footage or perhaps even more square footage in the development,” she said.
Boyer officials offered assurances the refugee center would not be displaced during construction, Huftalin said.
Last week, Boyer Co. partner Mike Glauser told the board’s Facilities and Finance Committee that the developer’s initial interest in the site stemmed from the presence of the refugee center.
Glauser said Boyer Co. founder Roger Boyer is also founder of a nonprofit organization called ONErefugee, which mentors, counsels and provides financial assistance to refugee students attending college.
Boyer Co. was selected by the college among other developers that submitted proposals.
Woolstenhulme said it is important that the refugee center is addressed in the college’s formal agreement with the developer.
“I just think it’s really important to make sure that is included in there because part of the legislative intent in building out Westpointe was to free up some space there for the refugees, even though there wasn’t a contract or anything in place there. I would just encourage us to make sure that’s included in that process,” Woolstenhulme said.
Huftalin said the college and Boyer Co. also talked about the possibility of also developing affordable housing on the site along the TRAX line, but no formal agreement can be forged until the proposal winds through the approval process.
The lease must also be approved by the Utah State Building Board and is contingent on review by the Utah Attorney General’s Office.
Regent Wilford Clyde said SLCC is the first public college to seek what board of regents policy describes as a “nontraditional arrangement.”
“One of the things we’ve talked about is having this be a little bit of a pilot program to see how this goes before jumping into it with all the other institutions,” Clyde said.
The college also considered the possibility of selling the campus, which was recently appraised at $5.7 million.
Under the proposed 40-year lease agreement, “the college anticipates to accumulate more than the appraised value of the land after 13 years,” board documents state.
