In the News

Salt Lake City announced a record $17.7 million in funding in March for 14 affordable housing projects throughout the city. The conversation now turns to where it gets built.

If history is any indication, those conversations won’t be smooth sailing.

According to a city affordable housing dashboard, there are almost 1,400 affordable units under construction. The highest concentrations are near the University of Utah and the Liberty Wells neighborhood.

During last year’s discussions over whether the city should change residential zoning, city officials heard concerns ranging from building costs to “poorly dressed neighborhoods that don't fit.” Other common arguments center around preserving neighborhood character or density.

Housing advocates say those arguments miss the mark.

“Low income people do not damage a neighborhood,” said Turner Bitton, chair of the Glendale Community Council and founder of the nonprofit SLC Neighbors for More Neighbors.

“A neighborhood is best when it is income diverse, and when people who are looking for opportunity can live in the neighborhood that aligns with the opportunity they're seeking.”

Read more

Turner Bitton grew up in Ogden but dreamed of living in Salt Lake City.

“I grew up in a rural area as a queer person,” Bitton said, “the city is not only a great place to live because there’s so much opportunity here, but there’s a sense of safety. There’s a sense of connection and community that comes with being in the city.”

That experience of finding connection, community and safety and a desire to ensure that others looking for the same thing could find a place to call home in Salt Lake City spurred him to create the housing advocacy group SLC Neighbors for More Neighbors.

It also is the reason that Bitton is supporting a new proposed ordinance change that would, in part, create incentives for developers to turn older buildings into housing and allow multifamily housing in areas that would previously require a rezone.

Read more

When pollution plagues the Salt Lake Valley’s air, everyone in Flor Isabel’s family feels it in a magnified way.

By day, it’s a concert of coughing and wheezing. By night, the tune turns into snores and little gasps for air.

With darker shades of gray in the sky, the burning sensation in Isabel’s throat intensifies. In 2022, in a week with many reports of wildfires, the walk to work became so unbearable that Isabel was forced to remain at home for a couple of days — even if that meant losing income.

“Within the week, it was just stuck in there,” they said. “So gray, so-so gray and at the throat, ardía, quemaba [’it hurt, it burnt’ in Spanish], even in the house.”

Isabel is among dozens of west-siders The Salt Lake Tribune and KUER have interviewed during the past year to hear — in their own voices — what it’s like to live where air pollution can reach dangerous, even deadly, levels.

In previous installments of this series, we’ve covered the history of the west side’s air troubles, and the health and economic costs of bad air. Here, we discuss what experts and officials are offering as potential solutions, and the obstacles to making them happen.

‘It’s messing with our health’

Isabel only has to drive a few minutes from their home to reach Kennecott’s properties. Their family home is also a short drive from the Great Salt Lake — a beautiful, they said, but now haunting body of water where drought would disproportionately affect its neighbors.

Isabel’s son, Xavier, shared their inhaler, an expensive item without health insurance. Isabel got a new job that had health benefits, so their health is improving. But the breathing struggles persist, and with them more headaches and the inability to live a more active life.

On days when Isabel’s health worries them, they calculate the cost of leaving Kearns. But they own their house, and home prices elsewhere in the valley feel out of reach.

“I can’t leave it because there’s nowhere else I could afford a house,” they said. “I’ve been there for nine years. I’m a single parent with four kids, so it’s been our home. It has a lot of sh--ty air, but the neighborhood’s … really, really awesome.”

Isabel is becoming more aware of how their home’s location influences their respiratory issues, and wishes elected officials could help mitigate air pollution. On Isabel’s list: More local air monitors to calculate the area’s air quality index more precisely, installing more air purifiers in schools, and making medication more accessible for those who struggle — because of availability or finances — with scheduling doctor’s appointments.

They also want to see politicians speak about it.

“It’s messing with our health in our daily lives,” Isabel said. “So why not expose it more, so that we — who are never brought into these conversations — can be aware of what’s going on in our community?”

Read more

Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City have both passed zoning reforms that will allow multiunit (or "middle housing") developments in once-single-family-only districts. Both cities are attempting to give builders more flexibility to add more housing in existing neighborhoods.

But the devil is always in the details. The particulars of Austin's reforms make it more likely that city will see more housing actually get built.

Austin

This past Thursday, the Austin City Council passed Phase One of its Home Options for Middle-income Employment (HOME) Initiative that allows three-unit homes to be built on all residential lots citywide. Previously, homeowners had only been allowed to build a single-family home and an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) (a.k.a. granny flats or in-law suites) in the city's lowest-density zones.

Other cities' triplex legalizations have produced few units because the new multiunit developments had to be roughly the same size as the single-family homes they were replacing.

Austin's reforms tweaked and simplified the city's code so that newly legal two- and three-unit homes can take up more land on each lot and be built with smaller setbacks from the street. If builders maintain the existing single-family home on the property, they'll get "preservation" and "sustainability" bonuses which allow them to cover even more of the property.

Chris Gannon, an Austin architect at Shams Gannon, says the HOME Initiative legalizes smaller, more affordable homes that Austinites want to buy.

Market data shows that when a new large home and ADU were built on the same property, "that ADU would sell immediately, while that primary [home] would sit on the market for weeks. The smaller, more affordable homes are in high, high demand."

Read more

Students and Salt Lake City officials turned the first dirt at the old Raging Waters water park Thursday, moving the largest park the city’s west side has ever seen closer to reality.

The Glendale Regional Park is designed, city officials say, to be the west side’s version of the city’s major parks — Liberty Park and Sugar House Park.

But, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said at Thursday’s groundbreaking event, “this is the first regional park in Salt Lake City’s history that will truly be built by community inspiration.”

The regional park — connected to nearby Glendale Park, 17th South River Park, Glendale Golf Course and the Jordan River Parkway — is set to become a major 17-acre attraction.

The cost for the park could run between $30 million and $50 million, Public Lands planner Kat Maus said in March. Voters in 2022 approved a general obligation bond, which included $27 million to fund the park’s planning and construction.

Read more

SALT LAKE CITY — Ifa Motuliki cracked a smile through the lightly falling hail as he watched students gather around city leaders to break ground on a new regional park less than a block from his Glendale home.

Sporting a white hat with the name of his neighborhood printed on it, Motuliki didn't want to miss the Thursday event. He fought to ensure the city included new pickleball courts as it pieced together a plan for the location where Raging Waters water park once stood.

"This is great. I have been waiting for this for many years now," he said, standing at the future park.

The six new pickleball courts adjacent to the park are just one component of the forthcoming Glendale Regional Park, the city's first regional park since Sugar House Park was established in 1957. It's also slated to host all sorts of amenities, from community gathering spaces to hiking areas and even a new outdoor pool once the full project is completed.

Salt Lake City leaders and community members braved the cold and soggy weather Thursday for the ceremonial start to the first phase of the project. This initial phase of the park should open in the summer of 2024.

"This is the first regional park in Salt Lake City history that will truly be built by community inspiration," Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said.

Read more

There’s a scene in the 1993 film “The Sandlot” where the dog, Hercules, is chasing Benny, the main character. As he’s sprinting for his life, Benny almost runs into a bicyclist and spins around onto the hood of a car in the process. Hercules, close behind, leaps onto the hood of the car in chase.

The scene cuts to an old woman wearing glasses and an elaborate flower hat propping herself up over the steering wheel while letting out a yelp.

To Glendale resident Dustin Evans, that woman was grandma.

And the lot at the center of the cult classic film is home.

“The Sandlot” was filmed in various parts of Utah during the summer of 1992. Much of the production centered in a dirt lot behind several houses on Glenrose Drive in the Glendale neighborhood of Salt Lake City. The lot is shared by the owners of those houses.

But how to preserve and showcase this piece of Salt Lake and baseball history has been a question without a real answer in the 30 years since the film was released.

“We’ve had a lot of people try to buy these properties as a whole because this would be a big chunk of property that they could turn into another old folks home or apartments or whatever,” Evans said.

The Glendale area has seen a rise in population and development in recent years, and some residents are concerned the neighborhood is losing its character as a result. Neighbors of the Sandlot celebrate its cultural significance to the community and want it to remain a part of the neighborhood’s fabric.

But some fear that could be difficult over time.

“The thing about the Sandlot that makes it interesting is that it is private property,” said Turner Bitton, chair of the Glendale Community Council who lives four houses down from the lot. “Unless there’s action taken to preserve and protect it — kind of capture that cultural significance — we could lose it very rapidly.”

Read more

Tucked along a cul-de-sac in Poplar Grove is a two-story, half-brick house that’s been in Kalo Hokafonu’s family for 30 years. For now, it sits in the boundaries of Riley Elementary School, where her daughter Magnolia attended pre-kindergarten last school year.

But when the Salt Lake City School District announced in February that it would be studying all 27 elementary schools for potential closure and boundary changes, Hokafonu had a feeling Riley might end up under the magnifying glass.

So she decided to act in advance. She looked at performance ratings, resources and the chances of finding a stable school community. All arrows pointed to the east side, leading her to enroll the 5-year-old at Ensign Elementary for kindergarten this fall.

“My mom has always said that the west-side schools, they’re either failing so the kids move or they decide to close it,” she said. “And it’s always in our area.”

And sure enough, Riley ended up on a list of seven elementary schools that the district decided earlier this month to study for potential closure. The other schools slated for study are Mary W. Jackson, Emerson, Wasatch, Hawthorne, Bennion and Newman.

Many parents and community members showed up at a recent school board meeting in attempts to get their schools off the list. But most who have publicly spoken out against the board’s decision have been supporters of schools on the city’s east side — like Emerson and Wasatch.

“I think more well-resourced neighborhoods and schools are inherently going to have a little bit of an advantage in this process,” said Glendale Neighborhood Council Chair Turner Bitton.

Read more

Three Glendale crosswalks became a canvas for paintings of the Jordan River and natural features around the Salt Lake Valley.

White, orange and different shades of blue representing the neighboring salt flats, the sun, the mountains and the river now pop on the roads, just as this west-side community planned it.

Residents hope the colorful paintings will inspire drivers to pump the brakes and take in the sights.

“The goal of the murals was to really slow down traffic,” said Glendale Neighborhood Council Chair Turner Bitton, “and create a temporary project that can kind of demonstrate the need for more investments in infrastructure.”

The three street murals, painted late last month, can be spotted on Glendale Drive near the Dual Immersion Academy, on Emery Street near Parkview Elementary School, and on Fremont Avenue near 800 West — areas that Bitton said see frequent foot traffic from students and seniors.

Read more