An instant icon: 111 Main sets standard for office projects around the globe.

• Author: Biton, Adva

Back in March 2012, as the country was still slogging its way out of the Great Recession, a brand-new outdoor mall opened in Salt Lake City: City Creek Center. The only mall to open during the years of the recession, the $2 billion center features 23 acres of retail, office, condos and apartments. It was an instant success that launched an urban revitalization throughout the downtown core.

Now, City Creek Reserve--the people behind City Creek Center--are putting the finishing touches on a new, iconic office building. Designed to meet LEED Gold standards, 111 Main is an energy-efficient, 24-floor, 440,000-square-foot Class A tower that will act as a gateway between downtown's cultural and business districts. City Creek Reserve is confident the building, engineered with cutting-edge technology and world-class amenities, will take downtown's renaissance to a whole new level.

"111 Main, without question, sets a new standard for office development in the Western U.S.," says Kevin Long, principal broker and COO of CBC Advisors. "This is not just an iconic building for Salt Lake City. You could take 111 and move it and set it in downtown Los Angeles--it would set a standard for commercial real estate. This will be the most technologically and architecturally advanced building in the Western U.S. when it's completed."

Indeed, the architecture firm for the building, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, has designed projects around the world, from London to San Francisco and Beijing. It was also the architect for the new One World Trade Center that opened in 2014 in New York City.

TRANSFORMING NO MAN'S LAND

The grand plans for 111 Main didn't happen overnight--in fact, they happened incrementally, out of a collaborative process between City Creek Reserve and the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake (RDA).

One block south of City Creek Center is Gallivan Center, 222 Main and a collection of Salt Lake's downtown office towers and high-rises. In between this dense center of office, retail and entertainment was what Matt Baldwin, 111 Main project director at City Creek Reserve, calls "a missing tooth": Block 70, situated between 100 and 200 South, and between Main and State streets.

The RDA and City Creek Reserve were independently pursuing their own solutions to transforming this no man's land. City Creek Reserve sold the RDA a parcel of land directly beside the space where they planned to build an office tower. The RDA made plans to build a state-of-the-art...