Planners, City Creek on different paths

The path to City Creek Center's approval from planning commissioners may have been paved with unauthorized patterns and materials.

Developers of the $1.5 billion downtown project find themselves at loggerheads with Salt Lake City planners over paving patterns on public sidewalks near entrances to the development.

City planning officials say the developers' plans to extend paving patterns and materials from the interior of the mixed-use development onto city sidewalks goes against city standards and will not be allowed.

Officials from City Creek Reserve Inc. and development partner Taubman Centers Inc. disagree, saying visuals used throughout the approval process for the development clearly showed the pattern changes and were adopted when the Planning Commission OK'd the project in January.

The developers appeared before the Planning Commission on Wednesday in hopes of receiving clarification on the issue. Following an hourlong discussion, planning commissioners unanimously voted to table the issue until it could be reviewed by city attorneys.

"We've come to a real dilemma," said Allan Sullivan, legal counsel for CCRI. "(City) staff is asking us to ignore the approved plans."

The motion approved by the Planning Commission on Jan. 23 listed a handful of conditions, including a statement that "all public way improvements conform to Salt Lake City standards." The standards specifically include paving materials.

Salt Lake City's downtown master plan calls for streets in the central business district to follow a consistent set of paving patterns, said Joel Paterson, city planner.

Main Street, where developers are planning the most change in sidewalk pattern, has its own set of downtown standards (80 percent brick and 20 percent concrete), as does the downtown portion of South Temple, Paterson said.

"The city's position is that a consistent paving pattern along the public way helps unify downtown and provides a consistent theme," he said.

Mary De La Mare-Schaefer, who oversees planning as the city's interim community and economic development director, said the conditions for approval laid out by the Planning Commission were clear to city staff.

The difference of opinion surfaced during a recent meeting between the developers and city planners, De La Mare-Schaefer said.

"We felt like it was a legitimate concern to bring forward to the Planning Commission," she said. "This is a huge project. We want to make sure everyone understands what the decision was and how to move forward."

Response from planning commissioners indicates that a majority of them do not believe they approved paving patterns or materials for the project — especially if they run contrary to city standards.

Comments