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John Daley reporting In Salt Lake the campaign to revive the central city is called "Downtown Rising." For a roadmap, one need look no further than our bustling sister city to the east, whose renaissance is in full bloom.
Most years, Colorado's number one tourist destination is not the capitol building. It's not Vail, Aspen, Steamboat or Mesa Verde. It's a 160-store shopping mall just minutes from downtown Denver. The mall attracts people from all over the region.
Chris Harris, Shopper, Santa Fe, NM: "We have a lot of wonderful things in Santa Fe. But we don't have a Sachs, we don't have a Neiman Marcus, we don't have a Williams Sonoma, and you know things like that. It makes it really nice to come here and shop and send everything home."
John Kinkade, Shopper, Loveland, Colo. Resident: "Really it's a destination shopping spree for me. Come down here, get what I want."
It's called the Cherry Creek Mall. If the name sounds familiar, it should. Salt Lake's new billion dollar downtown project will be called City Creek Center. Both projects share the same developer: Taubman.
Cherry Creek's GM worked in Salt Lake for three years.
Nick LeMasters, General Manager Cherry Creek Mall: "I think it's exactly what downtown Salt Lake needs."
At Cherry Creek, the big draws are the unique high-end and specialty stores. Just like what you'll see at City Creek. Add in fine dining, office and residential, and you've got a combo that's the city's number one generator of taxes, in the tens of millions of dollars.
Nick LeMasters, General Manager Cherry Creek Mall: "There's no reason to think the Salt Lake project will be any less successful than cherry creek."
Two keys to Denver's success Salt Lake would like to replicate: Helping small business prosper and adding plenty of downtown housing.
John Hickenlooper knows a thing or two about Denver's transformation from cow town to cosmopolitan.
John Hickenlooper, Mayor of Denver: "In the end, what's also going to make this all succeed is having real cool small businesses."
In the late 80s he started a brew pub in lower downtown. Thanks to healthy mix of projects big and small, downtown took off. Hickenlooper rode the wave all the way to the Mayor's office.
John Hickenlooper, Mayor of Denver: "You need to have people want to live, you can't force them. You've got to give them the social incentives to live in higher densities, to live in downtowns."
By way of advice, Denverites suggest Salt Lake promote proactive city programs and micro loans to support small business. They also suggest preserving one-of-a-kind historic treasures, like the First Security building.
Marilee Utter, Chair, Colorado Urban Land Institute: "Our historic buildings are just such an important element to save. They're one of the few things that differentiate one downtown from another downtown."
More advice: Consistently build new downtown housing. The City Creek plans include 200 residential units. Denver added 10,000 in a decade.
Nick LeMasters, General Manager Cherry Creek Mall: "This is really going to be one of those defining projects for the city that will really help to continue to put it on the map, in the same way the Olympics did."
John Hickenlooper, Mayor of Denver: "There's never been a better time to revitalize our downtowns."
Demolition for the City Creek project has already begun, but it'll really begin rolling at the start of the New Year. Completion is slated for 2011.
Currently, the main work on the City Creek Center project is on the Inn at Temple Square where workers are dismantling the building piece by piece, rather than imploding it, allowing for much of the building materials—including wood and concrete--to be recycled. This kind of dismantling also avoids much of the dust being released into the air.
In a couple of weeks, a giant demolition claw will be used to bring the Inn down, as the demolition works its way east.
No decision has been made yet on whether the old First Security bank building will be saved.
In Denver, it's now 15+ years after they really started making changes, and their downtown is clearly booming.
