SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake City leaders and developers broke ground Tuesday on a new multi-use, multi-income project backed by $15.5 million city funds. The development hopes to include multi-income housing, retail, childcare opportunities, and other amenities for the west side, but while some in the community are excited about the project, others have concerns.
Rose Lopez commutes daily from Ogden to the west side via bus, FrontRunner, and TRAX.
"It takes me two-and-a-half hours to get here," Lopez explained.
Lopez is hopeful the new Sparks Development Project on North Temple will allow her to move to the neighborhood she works in, but like others, she has her doubts it will actually be affordable.
"I have to see it to believe it," she said.
Salt Lake City District 1 Councilwoman, Victoria Petro, says the housing should be affordable for many based off the area's median income.
"If we look at the [median incomes] that will be served here, it goes from 20% up to 80%," Petro said. "Those are certainly the families that are being displaced. It's not just preventing their displacement, but it's allowing them to stay in their community in a dignified beautiful new rejuvenative way."
Petro says the development is a bright replacement to its predecessor, the notorious Overniter motel that developers started fielding proposals for in 2018.
"I wasn't a councilmember when it was a problem area, I was just a mom in the neighborhood reading on the Facebook page every time a stolen bike would be found here, a new fire would break out here, or a drug bust would happen here," she said.
Lopez agrees her commute through the neighborhood has felt safer since the motel was destroyed.
"Now that they've moved everything out of the way, I get off here every day, and I don't see nothing," Lopez said.
Local business owners are also hopeful the new development will bring more customers to the neighborhood.
Nicolas Cardinas owns Nico's Mexican Restaurant across from the new development and says the neighborhood is already better off with the closure of the motel, and believes the new development will make things even better.
"More people in the area maybe more people coming to eat in the restaurant," Cardinas hopes.
Cardinas, Lopez, and Petro are excited about the increase in housing, retail, and community amenities for the west side, while others worry the development is another act of gentrification by the city.
"Honestly I hate it... gentrification. At its finest. We were all just fine, until the city started pushing the homeless into the neighborhoods. People from West Jordan, Herriman, South Jorden never wanted to come to Rose Park or Glendale because it was considered the ghetto," wrote one Rose Park community member on Facebook. "Now everyone wants to build apartments and move into our little ghettos."
"Gentrify, more, more, more," read another.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall says before developments like Sparks begin, the city reaches out to the community to see what residents need and want in their neighborhoods.
"What I would say in terms of the broader development of this area is we asked the neighborhood what they need and what they want, and then when the city invests its investing in those very things the neighborhood community asked for," said Mendenhall.
Petro said Sparks is the kind of positive developments her district deserves.
"It's turning it into a place of hope a place for families to rebuild to reclaim their lives, to have upward mobility for their kids to be nurtured, to have our community come together it's a complete redemption for things that have gone wrong on the west side."
