Melting Pot.

• Author: Poore, Anne
• Position: Salt Lake City's planning director Stephen Goldsmith - Brief Article

New Real Estate Flavors Old Neighborhoods

Stephen Goldsmith, Salt Lake City's planning director, has worn numerous hats during his lifetime, all of them set at a rakish angle. A sculptor and craftsman, Goldsmith is the only artist in the country to head the planning department for a major city.

"He shares a deep sense of the importance of place in quality of life and the quality of a community ... I understand his vision for Salt Lake City and he's absolutely right on," says Mayor Rocky Anderson.

With that vision and an initial investment of $50, Goldsmith eventually turned 200,000 square feet of the Eccles-Browing Warehouse on Pierpont Avenue into affordable live/work space and the California Tire & Rubber Co. building into a successful mixed-use affordable housing project.

With that same $50 investment, he also began the Bridge Projects, which establishes a new, mixed-use residential neighborhood in a blighted industrial area (200 S. 500 West). It includes 64 units of mixed-income live/work space, a Buddhist temple, retail space and a building that contains a gallery, theater, and offices for several nonprofit agencies.

Goldsmith's initial $50 investment is now worth some $20 million in commercial real estate improvements for Salt Lake City. Anyone who wants a hand in developing the city's commercial sectors may want to listen to what he has to say.

And what he says is that mixed-use zoning is the wave of the future. As light rail goes up on 400 South, "you'll see that consistent push for mixed-use residential." The 2001 Utah Real Estate Market Perspective seems to mirror Goldmith's views, suggesting that such mixed-used residential options as grocery-anchored neighborhood centers and discount stores are current trends and town homes and condominiums are hot.

Responding to those trends, Salt Lake City has now proposed a Sam's Club for 1300 South and 300 West that would add a retail anchor to an existing neighborhood. Not to be left out, Ogden has now marked the old American Can Co. as a possible mixed-use site for both residential and commercial use.

Though Goldsmith hasn't seen one on the ground yet, development proposals are also suggesting retrofitting malls, making them into town centers by "filling in the parking lots with residential, with a portion of the mall serving the day-to-day needs of the people."

Along with mixed-use real estate, the Utah Real Estate Market Perspective also suggests that what's hot for...