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SALT LAKE CITY — A lot has happened since the Salt Lake Bees announced they were moving out of Smith's Ballpark in Salt Lake City after the 2024 season to a new stadium in South Jordan's Daybreak community.
Salt Lake City officials began and completed a competition to help it reimagine the ballpark space, the team's parent owner, the Larry H. Miller Company, helped launch a campaign to bring a major league team to Salt Lake City, and, more recently, it revealed last week where the new Daybreak stadium will be located.
Construction, however, has yet to begin on the new Daybreak stadium. So where are things at in the relocation process?
The Miller Company is currently putting the finishing touches on the new stadium's design and pre-construction work before it is scheduled to break ground on the project this fall, Steve Starks, the CEO of the Miller Company, told KSL.com Friday.
He explained that the "complicated" design process is a mixture of trying to figure out stadium size, seating, fan amenities and box seating, while also making sure it has all the amenities that Major League Baseball now requires teams to have for prospective players. It's also trying to piece together how people will have access to the ballpark, located between Mountain View Corridor and Grandville Avenue from east to west, and between Big Sur Drive and Lake Avenue from north to south.
The company has yet to release stadium renderings because it is piecing together all these factors, but those could be released by the end of summer. That's also when the exact cost of the new stadium is expected to be known.
From there, Starks believes there will be a fairly busy construction phase as crews race to beat the deadline before the 2025 season starts, which will likely be in late March or early April. While it's a short timeline, he does believe that the stadium is still on track to be completed in time for that year's season opener.
"We anticipate being open for the spring of 2025, so we'll need virtually all the time between now and then to have it ready for opening day," he said. "We have more time than when we renovated (Vivint Arena) — we did that in 127 days. This one, I would say the timeline is reasonable, but it will require work and progress every day."
Another reason the project cost is an unknown is the construction pricing is still high, but the construction supply chain is beginning to sort itself out, he added.
The complete project will contain much more than a new ballpark. The overall plan is a mixed-use "downtown" district with more housing, office space, restaurants and entertainment. Some of the logistics there require details on how much parking is needed, as well as ways to better utilize Mountain View Corridor and the Utah Transit Authority light-rail line that ends in Daybreak.
Starks said the company chose Daybreak because all the population data pointed to South Jordan's growth, all while opening up the possibility for a major league team to end up in Salt Lake City one day. The Census Bureau released its 2022 population estimates last month, finding that South Jordan and Salt Lake City anchored Salt Lake County's growth over the past year. Both cities are continuing to grow at high rates.
"We studied that data and were intentional about choosing Daybreak as the site of the Bees because it made so much sense, knowing that we would want a major league team in the capital city," he said.
Salt Lake City officials still plan on having something to build at Smith's Ballpark after the 2024 season wraps up, yet still unclear what will replace the ballpark that first opened in 1994 — even after the Ballpark Next design competition. The Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation is leading a $100 million fundraising initiative to help the future of the neighborhood that the Bees are leaving.
Starks spoke to KSL.com while attending an event the team hosted as a part of MLB's Play Ball Weekend. He said there has been "significant progress" since Big League Utah launched in April, though he wouldn't say what that progress was. There is still no official timeline for when MLB plans to expand, either.
The only certainty at this point is that if Utah does land an MLB team at some point, the Bees will be that team's Triple-A affiliate one day.
