Fairpark District may host stadiums, in plural, under this new bill
Signage promotes the Power District development outside the Rocky Mountain Power Gadsby plant in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Everyone involved in the Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District project had a clear vision of a vibrant, river-connected area, hopefully surrounding a $900 million Major League Baseball stadium for a portion of the west side of Salt Lake City.
But, a new bill aimed to clean up emerging details included one detail that raised some eyebrows, but mostly out of curiosity — the multiplication of the stadiums.
SB335, sponsored by Sen. Scott Sandall, R-Tremonton, also chair of the Utah Fairpark Area Investment and Restoration District (UFAIR) Board, allows for the development of multiple, small stadiums in the district. However, all players — the lawmaker, the executive director of UFAIR, and the Larry H. Miller Company, which is developing the district — insisted on Thursday that the provision didn't necessarily translate into an immediate change of plans.
Legislature approves funding plan for MLB stadium in Salt Lake City
'This is really just a flexibility option. There's no plans to do additional stadiums,' Benjamin Buys, the executive director of UFAIR, told the Senate Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee. 'But should that opportunity arise, we love the idea of being kind of the home of sports on the west side.'
The committee voted 2-1 to recommend the bill to the full Senate for its consideration.
Amanda Covington, chief corporate affairs officer for the Larry H. Miller Company, wrote a similar statement about the bill's language.
'The Power District is a large project that will be developed over many years,' she said. 'This language provides optionality as we work with UFAIR and other key stakeholders to continue to master plan the area.'
The stadiums would be for major league sports teams, the bill reads. That does not include college sports teams. But, the proposal also softens salary requirements for the teams the stadiums could host and lowers the minimum capacity of the arenas from 30,000 to 18,000 spectators.
Apart from that, the bill creates a system to get land use authority for the district in case there's a chance of adding more land to it.
It also moves up the date on which the authority could levy a 1.5% tax increase on short-term car rentals to Oct. 1, 2025, as opposed to the original agreement, which stated that the tax could only be collected after an MLB team acquisition announcement. But, that may change on the Senate floor.
'We have to go back and change when we're going to start to collect that tax,' Sandall said, 'because some discussions that I've had in the last hour indicate to me that that was a firm discussion.'
Eventually, Sandall added, the authority may contemplate using that revenue to fund its own police force, to clean up, to invest in the Jordan River and to allow the Fairpark to expand north.
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