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SALT LAKE CITY — Despite being just blocks away from downtown Main Street and at the heart of Salt Lake City's fastest-growing neighborhood, there are many days where Pioneer Park feels all but empty.
Aside from a person walking their dog around the nearly 10-acre park or a group of people chatting in the greenspace at the center of it, it's mostly quiet. Those moments are vastly different from the uber-popular Downtown Salt Lake City Farmers Market that brings thousands of people to the park every Saturday morning during the summer.
But a new preferred plan — one that would add an all-ages playground and cooling fountain, as well as new basketball and pickleball courts, enhance dog-park space and make the park more biodiverse — seeks to change everything, and bring more people to the park.
"We really want to see Pioneer Park be all that it can be," said Nancy Monteith, the senior landscape architect for Salt Lake City's Engineering Division, in an interview with KSL.com on Monday.
The design comes as the result of feedback collected from over 3,000 people from either online surveys or surveys conducted at public events in the city. But just in case the preferred plan misses the mark, the city launched another survey Friday and will host an online open house on Feb. 2 that will collect additional input before the final proposal is sent to city leaders.
Once that final blueprint is approved, construction could begin as early as next year.
The need for Pioneer Park
Pioneer Park is about as old as Utah's settlement history. It's the site of an old fort that pioneers began constructing a week after arriving in the valley, according to the Pioneer Park Coalition.
It was "a place of rest and reprieve" for quite some time before it became a playground in 1890, and then an official city park in 1898. That makes it one of the city's first official parks.
While it's a park that's attracted so many people since Utah's pioneer existence, it's also one that's struggled as a result of disrepair and disinterest.
This is why the city began to invest more into the park. In 2003, the city embarked on a "comprehensive community-supported master plan," according to Monteith. The first phase of the plan happened over a decade ago when a promenade to support a farmers market was added.
Then came funding for a multiuse field and it was completed a few years ago. Despite those makeovers, it has the lowest Google Review score (3.7 stars) among the city's largest parks.
Its score is buoyed by popular events, like the farmers market, car shows and concerts, and for its dog park. But its score is driven down because of issues like homelessness and crime in the surrounding area. One reviewer, giving it one star last year, wrote that it's "not a park for visiting" for this reason.
So the city is going back to the drawing board.
The Salt Lake City Council approved a little more than $3.4 million toward Pioneer Park improvements in 2019. The money comes from something called development impact fees, a one-time fee developers are assessed every time a new building is constructed that goes toward new park space or current park improvements.
Revisions to the park plan have happened enough times in recent history that Monteith says she often hears the same question when speaking with residents about redesigning it.
Again?
There's a reason city planners keep going back to the drawing board with Pioneer Park. For starters, finding new space in the city for anything, including parks, is difficult to find — and even harder to acquire. The park is also an existing green space, which is somehow even rarer to find downtown these days.
At the same time the funding was approved, Salt Lake City Public Lands completed an updated assessment that addressed the future needs of the city's parks and natural spaces. The study identified the population of the city's neighborhoods and how close everyone was to outdoor green space, including Pioneer Park and downtown Salt Lake City.
It found that Pioneer Park serves about 5,000 residents and 37,000 downtown employees. The downtown average of 2.8 acres of green space per 1,000 people also fell below the citywide average of 3.5 acres per 1,000 people.
Yet those numbers are already outdated because of the city's rapid growth. Last year, city planners did a rough review around Pioneer Park and found there have already been 1,000 new units added within a 15-minute walk of the park, and another 1,000 proposed units.
"We keep going to Pioneer Park, I think, because there's more that needs to be done and ... if you look at the magnitude of those investments of the past few decades, they have been relatively modest for a park that's at the center of downtown activity," Monteith said. "If you look at other parks in other cities in similar locations, it takes a significant level of investment to develop the kinds of uses and amenities that really keep a downtown park active day and evening. That's what we're hoping (for)."
The latest redesign
The 2019 survey didn't find just population and park access issues. It found interesting trends like that more Salt Lake City residents own dogs than have children — and that's especially true of the downtown area.
Using this information and the input results of many surveys conducted last year, the city pieced together ideas for a Pioneer Park revamp that would keep it busy but also not busy enough to annoy its neighbors.
"All of this is trying to figure out how we can add more service to our existing spaces," Monteith said. "Because if you just have a large green space, that doesn't offer quite as much opportunity as a space with a lot of activities."
The preferred proposal, essentially a rough draft of a final proposal, keeps a multipurpose field that was improved just three years ago. It calls for an enhanced dog park and an improved basketball court. The tennis court would be replaced by several pickleball courts.
There would be a signature plaza with a mist-producing fountain like a more-efficient splash pad next to an event pavilion toward the north end of the park, as well as an all-age playground toward the west that features slides and swings for children, and a fitness circuit for adults.
The plan would also add more trees to increase shade and create a canopy/botanic walk space surrounding the park. There would also be a tree grove at the northeast corner of the park, a conservation garden at the southwest corner and a pollinator garden at the southeast corner.
Kristin Riker, the director of Salt Lake City's Public Lands Department, added that the redesign also took the farmers market into consideration. The shade, seating and restrooms are all added features to make it easier for visitors to want to stay at the market longer.
"We appreciate the hard work and dedication of the Downtown Farmers Market and definitely wanted to limit any negative impacts to that event," Riker said, in a statement. "The Farmers Market has been invaluable to keeping Pioneer Park active and we want to find more ways to do just that."
Monteith adds that the park changes aren't an attempt to drive out homeless people who use the park, and the changes are inclusive to all its users.
The proposed changes are essentially an amalgamation of recent changes at other city parks, like Fairmont Park which went from being an open green space to one of the city's most biodiverse areas. There would also be more native "water-wise" plants like ones planted at the recent Artesian Well Park redesign, which require much less water than non-native plants and also attract declining pollinator species.
The fountain would produce mist instead of spraying water to reduce water use because of the drought concerns that have only worsened in Utah since funding for the upgrades was approved. It would still produce the cooling effect that makes splash pads popular on hot summer days, Monteith said.
The city's newer pickleball courts have also seen plenty of usage as a result of the game's growing popularity. That's why the plan would add more of those courts.
Monteith contends the park redesign goes beyond just being a culmination of local and national park trends. It gives the park a chance to be a pioneer in a new way, becoming more climate adaptive and providing downtown the natural space it needs.
"I can see these things happen in, hopefully, many of our spaces as we move forward," she said.
The online survey for feedback on the preferred proposal closes on Feb. 18. The city will also collect feedback during its Feb. 2 online open house. The public feedback will also help city leaders determine the projects that will be given top priority beginning in 2023.
