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The Mendenhall Administration presented to the City Council last night the outlines of the draft agreement negotiated with Smith Entertainment Group (SEG) for a three-block area including the Delta Center and the Salt Palace Convention Center for the investment of nearly $1 billion of new sales tax collections.
SEG, majority owners of NBA’s Utah Jazz, NHL’s Utah Hockey Club (relocated from Phoenix), and soccer’s Real Salt Lake and Utah Royals, have insisted that “it’s not about an arena, it’s about revitalizing a downtown that desperately needs investment.”
Mayor Erin Mendenhall has embraced the initiative, on Tuesday declaring victory in “accomplishing a flagship goal of securing not only the Utah Jazz but a new NHL team in our Downtown core.”
Details of the draft Participation Agreement outlined by SB 272, passed in this spring’s state legislative session, will be released later in the week at City Hall. In the meantime, an outline of the deal was surfaced to the public for the first time at the Council’s work session on Tuesday.
Let’s briefly look at the deal while we also review the City Council’s take on SEG’s proposed zoning changes for the district.
Outlines of the deal
Required to transmit a participation agreement to state authorities by September 1, City Hall has been feverishly working to meet the deadlines set by SB 272 – while also advancing city priorities in the agreement as much as deemed possible.
Council Chair Victoria Petro opened the briefing by acknowledging the efforts put in by Administration and Council staff to get to this point. Petro stated, “This is a culmination of a lot of work for us, and I’m really proud of the work you, my co-counselors, did.”
The briefing was led by head City Attorney Katie Lewis, who trotted the Council through deal points that had been informally approved by Council Members previously, but only transmitted to the City Council office just minutes before the briefing began.
For the public, at first blush it looks like City Hall’s demands for community benefits met the ears of willing partners in SEG.
While the city received no guarantees that the NBA and NHL franchises won’t ever leave Downtown, a number of conditions are proposed to benefit the community at large as well as disadvantaged individuals and families in the city.
Here are some of the proposed agreement’s main points, as released by the Administration on Tuesday:
- Maximum amount of net bond proceeds that SEG may receive is $900,000,000. This will be paid from the Revitalization Tax collected by the City over thirty years, which is anticipated to generate revenues of approximately $1.2 billion.
- Those funds must be spent in 10 years. Of that $900,000,000, SEG commits to spend $525,000,000 in the Delta Center remodel and $375,000,000 for the other district improvements. Private funds will make up the difference between sales tax revenue and actual construction costs.
- A fee on tickets will be charged to fund a Public Benefit Account. Each ticket, depending on price, will be taxed $1-3 “To be spent on family-sized and affordable housing and other public benefit initiatives as determined by the City, and other initiatives the City identifies.” These funds can be spent in any area of the city – and are already committed in the draft agreement for items like public art.
- Gathering spaces–privately constructed, owned, and operated by SEG–will be open to all, according to guidelines that seem to model Federal inclusivity standards, including sexual orientation and gender identity.
- Japantown: Att least $5 million investment in Japantown, as well as spatial respect for the Japanese Church of Christ on the north side of 100 South. District 5 Council Member Darin Mano, a Japanese-American with family history in the diaspora and dispossession of Japanese Americans during and after WWII, told his colleagues that “the community didn’t get all they wanted in these negotiations, and I want to hear more about that.”
- Transparency and reporting requirements between the City and SEG.
- Community support and workforce development: including apprenticeship programs, college internships, high school shadowing programs, youth athletics programming, community outreach requirements, and free and subsidized tickets for income qualifying individuals.
- Requirements that a lease agreement is in place between SEG and SL County for the two Salt Palace blocks.
The full draft agreement will be available “in the next 24 to 48 hours,” according to the Mayor’s communications team. Here’s the outline released Tuesday afternoon.
And the zoning?
Provo-based SEG CEO Ryan Smith and his frontman for public negotiations, Mike Maughan, are making some pretty big asks for land use and zoning changes in the area between the Salt Palace at West Temple and The Gateway at 400 West.
Instead of proposing to upzone to the city’s most intense zone, D-1, and following its rules, SEG wants new rules for D-4, the zone currently existing on its targeted parcels.
On the developer’s wish list: unlimited height, permitted helicopter ports and stadiums, plaza-building ability (negating maximum setbacks), as well as major signage and advertising changes.
The Planning Division’s latest recommendations for changes to the D-4 zone look to have aligned with City Council’s priorities:
- Height limit: 600 feet, and design review required over 75 feet. In D-1, heights are unlimited with design review.
- Heliports as conditional use, and stadiums/arenas as permitted.
- Allow larger signs than are currently allowed in the D-4 zone throughout the three-block district, like those currently allowed at the Delta Center sign overlay, at the Leonardo, and at LA LIVE.
- Those signs, which can be digital, can’t advertise ”off-site” products/events. In other words, they can’t become what the city calls billboards.
The prohibition against off-site advertising seems secure, backed up by the Planning Division and a majority of City Councillors.
Planning Director NIck Norris told the council Tuesday that “We’ve had some similar requests, pertaining to the grand boulevards and similar things, and those are very complicated issues. I think it’s better to have those more focused and given the time they need to be discussed, versus trying to get something in place before Sept 1–because I think that will potentially have some unintended consequences in other parts of the city.”
While full-on digital billboards advertising whatever will likely be disallowed, large video screens look to be an integral part of SEG’s design, given initial renderings.
The potential “nuisance” effects of signs already exist in city code (dwell time, twirl, and brightness), and wouldn’t be otherwise regulatable unless petitioners have to go through design review or otherwise need a development agreement, Norris told the Council.
In June, the city’s Planning Commission rejected the requested zoning changes in a unanimous vote. One commissioner warned of “a jumbotron-fueled, oversized and glitzy sports center” that will not “be anything but a relic needing overhaul in less than 20 years,”
Nevertheless, City Hall seems to be primed to make SEG’s Sports, Entertainment, Convention and Cultural District happen.
The City Council is set up to vote on the terms of the Participation Agreement at its next meeting, next week on July 9.
The zoning changes have been scheduled for a vote on August 9.
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