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SALT LAKE CITY — Wednesday marks the first anniversary of the Larry H. Miller Company's bombshell announcement that it would move the Salt Lake Bees out of Smith's Ballpark and to a new stadium the company is building in South Jordan's Daybreak community.
One year later, work on that new stadium is underway, but the future of the Smith's Ballpark beyond the Bees' 2024 season remains about as unclear as it did on Jan. 17, 2023. The team's final home game in the stadium, which Salt Lake City owns, is slated for Sept. 22 against the Oklahoma City Baseball Club, but what happens after that is still a work in progress.
Corinne Piazza, a senior project manager Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City, told KSL.com Wednesday that the RDA has been "working diligently" to reimagine the space over the past year.
In an update to the Ballpark Community Council earlier this month, she said the city will ask contractors and developers for timelines regarding when they can get to work as the city crafts a final vision for the ballpark. The city has informed them that they will have some "space" to make sure the job is done well, but there's a "huge sense of urgency" to make sure the land isn't vacant "for any significant amount of time."
The ultimate goal is to begin work on a project as soon as possible after the final out is recorded in the Bees' final home game, yet any idea of an exact timeline is to be determined. With permit approvals, financing and other requirements, construction would likely be "a ways out" even if a final plan for the site were already selected, she explained.
"We want to make sure we get it right; we also want to make sure it's not vacant, so we're going to have to land somewhere in between," she said, adding that the stadium could still be used for festivals and events while future plans are finalized.
Planning the future of the Smith's Ballpark site
RDA officials say the city is in the process of wrapping up the "guiding principles" portion of its overall plan to figure out what to do with the stadium and the parking lot to its north, which are about 13½ acres altogether. It's essentially the third step in the long process, where the city forms guidelines, values and objectives that will be used as a compass for forthcoming plans that seek to turn the land into "an iconic, activated space."
It followed a visioning process that gathered community feedback starting in August.
Goals include boosting neighborhood safety and activation, connectivity and acknowledging the century-old history of baseball in the Ballpark neighborhood, as well as something that incorporates the views of the Wasatch Mountains, according to a draft document posted on the city's website.
Public comment on the document ends on Friday before the document is finalized next month. That's not to say the final project will have all of these goals.
"This is an idea starter; it's also not the only things that someone could do," said Erika Chmielewski, a planner with GSBS Architects, which is assisting Salt Lake City.
This step is expected to be completed soon before the future of the site starts to look clearer. The city will use all of the information to form a request for proposal document, which is where the city will take "all the ideas that everyone has had" and roll them into design concepts, Piazza explained.
A design consultant team will help the city weave all of the feedback into the concepts. The team, once formed, will work between spring and fall to help "facilitate a collaborative process" between the city, residents and the legacy fund, Piazza explained on Wednesday.
The RDA is currently accepting applications for consultants to help "shared vision of success for the ballpark Site and neighboring community." The window for applications closes on Feb. 12.
Salt Lake City is also working with the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Foundation on a legacy fund to help the Ballpark community that was announced shortly after the announcement about the new Daybreak ballpark. Piazza said the fund will "benefit the ballpark site and neighborhood" with a focus on "community wellbeing and health outcomes."
Final plans?
The designs will ultimately look different from a design competition that the city launched hours after the Miller company announced its departure from Smith's Ballpark. The competition yielded three winners, but the point of it was to come up with unique ideas to serve as a foundation for the types of ways residents could use the space in the future.
The future designs may incorporate some of the winning ideas, but must also include limitations of the space and ways that it fits in with the existing infrastructure.
"That urban design framework will include land uses, building massing and scale, right of way alignments and all the way down to programming," Piazza said. "We'll take that urban design framework and then move into our last piece, which is we're ready to start building."
But for now, the stadium sits empty during the Bees offseason. The team's final season in Salt Lake City will begin on the road before its final home opener at Smith's Ballpark, which is scheduled for April 2.
