Salt Lake City:
Policy Cut Chap 19
Salt Lake City:
The reader reading about Salt Lake City may be reminded of Oklahoma City; they do share several commonalities. Be wary, however. Salt Lake City exhibits its own cultural personality, reflecting its Mormonism to be sure, but also expressing a profound and consistent antagonism toward an activist government. Salt Lake City grew over 21% between 1940 and 1950, but in the decade following only 4% and in 1960-1970 the city declined 7%. Over the next two decades (1970-1990) Salt Lake City declined another 7% (1980) and 2% (1990) to about 159,000 residents. Four decades of declining population is not typical of western cities in this era. The Salt Lake metro area, around 227,000 in 1950, however, expanded to almost 790,000 by 1990. Salt Lake City did not chase its population through aggressive annexation[1] (or urban renewal); suburbanization went its natural course fairly unobstructed by central city resistance. If, as I have argued, urban renewal is a CBD-based strategy to counter suburbanization, one would not expect Salt Lake City to have much, if any, urban renewal history. You would be correct.
Paradoxically, a dominant characteristic of Salt Lake City, to me at least, is its atypically weak political (and policy) system—it operated with a commission form of government through most of the period—and yet this weak political system over twenty-five years was itself dominated by extremely conservative, iconoclastic, often maverick strong mayors. These mayors, at minimum, set the tone for the City’s politics, and often acted as if they ran the City in the style of a dictator. To me this suggests a political culture populated by individuals not focused on politics, and not especially concerned about the conduct of politics on a daily basis—rising up only if one’s ox was gored. This is Privatism at its most pure level, a Privatism which retained to a considerable degree the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian low-tax, minimal recourse to government—relying instead on the yeoman citizen. In the latter years of this period, starting in the 1970’s, however, it did become apparent that things were changing as will be evident in future chapters.
The election of former Governor J. Bracken Lee as mayor in 1959 continued the tradition developed by Mayor Earl J. Glade (1945-1956). Lee would serve until his semi-forced retirement in 1972. Behind the scenes “real power in the city lay not with the commission [city government] but with the extra-political triumvirate of Gus P. Backman (Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce), David O. McKay, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and John F. Fitzpatrick, publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune (… significantly the triumvirate consisted of a Mormon, an inactive Mormon, and a gentile)”.[2] Of the three Blackman served as the public voice, the go-to man, and the glue that held the triumvirate together and made it a powerful force in city-policy-making. Suspicious of change, Backman and the triumvirate propped up the commission government which itself was consumed with minor matters, departmental politics, scandals, tight budgets, and non-economic development policy. Water politics and airport modernization was the closest one usually got to economic development. Whatever happened in Salt Lake City was almost always accomplished by the natural workings of the private sector.
Efforts to change the form of government and upgrade the capacity of its bureaucratic capacity were constant and persistent. “Home Rule” however, was defeated until 1979 when the City changed to a strong-mayor government (Mayor Ted Wilson). In these years “Salt Lake continued to experience problems of urban sprawl as many people and businesses moved to the suburbs[3], leaving a decaying inner city …. As suburbs increasingly became bedroom communities for people employed in the city, such things as transportation, coordination with the county on government services, and effective planning for urban renewal presented new problems to community leaders.”[4]
In the sixties, a civic auditorium (convention center/arts complex) and sewer infrastructure were proposed by a 1961 Advisory Committee on City Planning and Capital Improvements, but the proposals generated a variety of opponents, including the mayor. Several referendums later amended the original proposal so that only the sports and exhibition complex were built and opened in 1967. The Salt Palace, as it came to be called, built without federal dollars, “was an important turning point … Much of the surrounding area was soon rehabilitated.… It attracted major new restaurant, shopping, and hotel facilities in the vicinity … the completion of the first phase of the Triad Center in 1984. In addition, professional basketball and hockey teams were headquartered at the Salt Palace, and the Symphony Hall added in 1979 became the home of the world-renowned Utah Symphony Orchestra”.[5]
During these years, advocates for participation in the federal urban renewal program surfaced. “The movement included constructing more pleasant housing, and building newer commercial structures in the city’s core area. Proponents of urban renewal said that Salt Lake City could avoid the national trend to urban sprawl if the core city were made more pleasant”.[6] Mayor Lee (but not the business community) was opposed and in the course of the following referendum he campaigned against it “on the God-given right to own property” and a “scare campaign aimed at big government’s use of eminent domain. The 1965 urban renewal referendum was defeated six to one. Development in the CBD limped along in the following years, and lacking a master plan, what followed reflected the interests of the developers and institutions whose projects were built. With the election of a new mayor, “Jake” Garn in 1972, however, the tone changed.
Garn was open to urban planning, advocated a change in the form of government, city/county consolidation, the use of CETA funds, and called attention to a 1972 report which castigated the City for permitting Salt Lake City to become a metropolis of blighted neighborhoods. Mostly, since the major structural changes proved impossible in a still-commission government, Garn settled for capacity upgrades, joining the National League of Cities (for the first time in Salt Lake’s history), and trying to focus attention on airport modernization. His chief success in economic development was his 1973 creation of the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency, with eminent domain powers, and CDBG funding to upgrade and demolish housing.
Garn left to become Senator and a new mayor, Ted Wilson was elected in 1975. Wilson, able to finally change the form of government to strong mayor, was reelected (two more terms) becoming the City’s first strong mayor in 1980. By then, commercial redevelopment of the central city was long out of style, and during the eighties neighborhoods were the principal focus of Salt Lake City’s economic development program. Mostly, zoning, conformity to the 1967 master plan, and historic preservation were the central elements of the City’s neighborhood-based community development program. Neighborhood groups were formed and through the 1990’s economic development did not pursue commercial redevelopment in any consistent fashion. Tourism (and, of course, the state right to work law) were the other planks of the area’s economic development program. So, if there were any city that declined to participate in the Age of Urban Renewal, the honor goes to Salt Lake City.
[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/1640483-annexation-city-size-1950-2010-a.html; While Oklahoma City expanded its city size by over 555% between 1950 and 2000, Phoenix just shy of 500%, Salt Lake City annexed 56%, below Madison WI’s 61%.
[2] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles: a History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1984), p, 263 and p. 265.
[3] Ironically, for reasons unknown to me, Mormons tended more to suburbanization, and during these years sprawl made Salt Lake City less Mormon in population than previously—but with more minorities and poor.
[4] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 273.
[5] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 278.
[6] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 279.
End Chap 19
============
Policy system cut
Salt Lake City:
The reader reading about Salt Lake City may be reminded of Oklahoma City; they do share several commonalities. Be wary, however. Salt Lake City exhibits its own cultural personality, reflecting its Mormonism to be sure, but also expressing a profound and consistent antagonism toward an activist government. Salt Lake City grew over 21% between 1940 and 1950, but in the decade following only 4% and in 1960-1970 the city declined 7%. Over the next two decades (1970-1990) Salt Lake City declined another 7% (1980) and 2% (1990) to about 159,000 residents. Four decades of declining population is not typical of western cities in this era. The Salt Lake metro area, around 227,000 in 1950, however, expanded to almost 790,000 by 1990. Salt Lake City did not chase its population through aggressive annexation[1] (or urban renewal); suburbanization went its natural course fairly unobstructed by central city resistance. If, as I have argued, urban renewal is a CBD-based strategy to counter suburbanization, one would not expect Salt Lake City to have much, if any, urban renewal history. You would be correct.
Paradoxically, a dominant characteristic of Salt Lake City, to me at least, is its atypically weak political (and policy) system—it operated with a commission form of government through most of the period—and yet this weak political system over twenty-five years was itself dominated by extremely conservative, iconoclastic, often maverick strong mayors. These mayors, at minimum, set the tone for the City’s politics, and often acted as if they ran the City in the style of a dictator. To me this suggests a political culture populated by individuals not focused on politics, and not especially concerned about the conduct of politics on a daily basis—rising up only if one’s ox was gored. This is Privatism at its most pure level, a Privatism which retained to a considerable degree the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian low-tax, minimal recourse to government—relying instead on the yeoman citizen. In the latter years of this period, starting in the 1970’s, however, it did become apparent that things were changing as will be evident in future chapters.
The election of former Governor J. Bracken Lee as mayor in 1959 continued the tradition developed by Mayor Earl J. Glade (1945-1956). Lee would serve until his semi-forced retirement in 1972. Behind the scenes “real power in the city lay not with the commission [city government] but with the extra-political triumvirate of Gus P. Backman (Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce), David O. McKay, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and John F. Fitzpatrick, publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune (… significantly the triumvirate consisted of a Mormon, an inactive Mormon, and a gentile)”.[2] Of the three Blackman served as the public voice, the go-to man, and the glue that held the triumvirate together and made it a powerful force in city-policy-making. Suspicious of change, Backman and the triumvirate propped up the commission government which itself was consumed with minor matters, departmental politics, scandals, tight budgets, and non-economic development policy. Water politics and airport modernization was the closest one usually got to economic development. Whatever happened in Salt Lake City was almost always accomplished by the natural workings of the private sector.
Efforts to change the form of government and upgrade the capacity of its bureaucratic capacity were constant and persistent. “Home Rule” however, was defeated until 1979 when the City changed to a strong-mayor government (Mayor Ted Wilson). In these years “Salt Lake continued to experience problems of urban sprawl as many people and businesses moved to the suburbs[3], leaving a decaying inner city …. As suburbs increasingly became bedroom communities for people employed in the city, such things as transportation, coordination with the county on government services, and effective planning for urban renewal presented new problems to community leaders.”[4]
In the sixties, a civic auditorium (convention center/arts complex) and sewer infrastructure were proposed by a 1961 Advisory Committee on City Planning and Capital Improvements, but the proposals generated a variety of opponents, including the mayor. Several referendums later amended the original proposal so that only the sports and exhibition complex were built and opened in 1967. The Salt Palace, as it came to be called, built without federal dollars, “was an important turning point … Much of the surrounding area was soon rehabilitated.… It attracted major new restaurant, shopping, and hotel facilities in the vicinity … the completion of the first phase of the Triad Center in 1984. In addition, professional basketball and hockey teams were headquartered at the Salt Palace, and the Symphony Hall added in 1979 became the home of the world-renowned Utah Symphony Orchestra”.[5]
During these years, advocates for participation in the federal urban renewal program surfaced. “The movement included constructing more pleasant housing, and building newer commercial structures in the city’s core area. Proponents of urban renewal said that Salt Lake City could avoid the national trend to urban sprawl if the core city were made more pleasant”.[6] Mayor Lee (but not the business community) was opposed and in the course of the following referendum he campaigned against it “on the God-given right to own property” and a “scare campaign aimed at big government’s use of eminent domain. The 1965 urban renewal referendum was defeated six to one. Development in the CBD limped along in the following years, and lacking a master plan, what followed reflected the interests of the developers and institutions whose projects were built. With the election of a new mayor, “Jake” Garn in 1972, however, the tone changed.
Garn was open to urban planning, advocated a change in the form of government, city/county consolidation, the use of CETA funds, and called attention to a 1972 report which castigated the City for permitting Salt Lake City to become a metropolis of blighted neighborhoods. Mostly, since the major structural changes proved impossible in a still-commission government, Garn settled for capacity upgrades, joining the National League of Cities (for the first time in Salt Lake’s history), and trying to focus attention on airport modernization. His chief success in economic development was his 1973 creation of the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency, with eminent domain powers, and CDBG funding to upgrade and demolish housing.
Garn left to become Senator and a new mayor, Ted Wilson was elected in 1975. Wilson, able to finally change the form of government to strong mayor, was reelected (two more terms) becoming the City’s first strong mayor in 1980. By then, commercial redevelopment of the central city was long out of style, and during the eighties neighborhoods were the principal focus of Salt Lake City’s economic development program. Mostly, zoning, conformity to the 1967 master plan, and historic preservation were the central elements of the City’s neighborhood-based community development program. Neighborhood groups were formed and through the 1990’s economic development did not pursue commercial redevelopment in any consistent fashion. Tourism (and, of course, the state right to work law) were the other planks of the area’s economic development program. So, if there were any city that declined to participate in the Age of Urban Renewal, the honor goes to Salt Lake City.
[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/1640483-annexation-city-size-1950-2010-a.html; While Oklahoma City expanded its city size by over 555% between 1950 and 2000, Phoenix just shy of 500%, Salt Lake City annexed 56%, below Madison WI’s 61%.
[2] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles: a History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1984), p, 263 and p. 265.
[3] Ironically, for reasons unknown to me, Mormons tended more to suburbanization, and during these years sprawl made Salt Lake City less Mormon in population than previously—but with more minorities and poor.
[4] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 273.
[5] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 278.
[6] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 279.
=========
Policy System Cuts
Thanks! But No Thanks Salt Lake City:
The reader reading about Salt Lake City may be reminded of Oklahoma City; they do share several commonalities. Be wary, however. Salt Lake City exhibits its own cultural personality, reflecting its Mormonism to be sure, but also expressing a profound and consistent antagonism toward an activist government. Salt Lake City grew over 21% between 1940 and 1950, but in the decade following only 4% and in 1960-1970 the city declined 7%. Over the next two decades (1970-1990) Salt Lake City declined another 7% (1980) and 2% (1990) to about 159,000 residents. Four decades of declining population is not typical of western cities in this era. The Salt Lake metro area, around 227,000 in 1950, however, expanded to almost 790,000 by 1990. Salt Lake City did not chase its population through aggressive annexation[1] (or urban renewal); suburbanization went its natural course fairly unobstructed by central city resistance. If, as I have argued, urban renewal is a CBD-based strategy to counter suburbanization, one would not expect Salt Lake City to have much, if any, urban renewal history. You would be correct.
Paradoxically, a dominant characteristic of Salt Lake City, to me at least, is its atypically weak political (and policy) system—it operated with a commission form of government through most of the period—and yet this weak political system over twenty-five years was itself dominated by extremely conservative, iconoclastic, often maverick strong mayors. These mayors, at minimum, set the tone for the City’s politics, and often acted as if they ran the City in the style of a dictator. To me this suggests a political culture populated by individuals not focused on politics, and not especially concerned about the conduct of politics on a daily basis—rising up only if one’s ox was gored. This is Privatism at its most pure level, a Privatism which retained to a considerable degree the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian low-tax, minimal recourse to government—relying instead on the yeoman citizen. In the latter years of this period, starting in the 1970’s, however, it did become apparent that things were changing as will be evident in future chapters.
The election of former Governor J. Bracken Lee as mayor in 1959 continued the tradition developed by Mayor Earl J. Glade (1945-1956). Lee would serve until his semi-forced retirement in 1972. Behind the scenes “real power in the city lay not with the commission [city government] but with the extra-political triumvirate of Gus P. Backman (Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce), David O. McKay, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and John F. Fitzpatrick, publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune (… significantly the triumvirate consisted of a Mormon, an inactive Mormon, and a gentile)”.[2] Of the three Blackman served as the public voice, the go-to man, and the glue that held the triumvirate together and made it a powerful force in city-policy-making. Suspicious of change, Backman and the triumvirate propped up the commission government which itself was consumed with minor matters, departmental politics, scandals, tight budgets, and non-economic development policy. Water politics and airport modernization was the closest one usually got to economic development. Whatever happened in Salt Lake City was almost always accomplished by the natural workings of the private sector.
In the sixties, a civic auditorium (convention center/arts complex) and sewer infrastructure were proposed by a 1961 Advisory Committee on City Planning and Capital Improvements, but the proposals generated a variety of opponents, including the mayor. Several referendums later amended the original proposal so that only the sports and exhibition complex were built and opened in 1967. The Salt Palace, as it came to be called, built without federal dollars, “was an important turning point … Much of the surrounding area was soon rehabilitated.… It attracted major new restaurant, shopping, and hotel facilities in the vicinity …
During these years, advocates for participation in the federal urban renewal program surfaced. “The movement included constructing more pleasant housing, and building newer commercial structures in the city’s core area. Proponents of urban renewal said that Salt Lake City could avoid the national trend to urban sprawl if the core city were made more pleasant”.[3] Mayor Lee (but not the business community) was opposed and in the course of the following referendum he campaigned against it “on the God-given right to own property” and a “scare campaign aimed at big government’s use of eminent domain. The 1965 urban renewal referendum was defeated six to one. Development in the CBD limped along in the following years, and lacking a master plan, what followed reflected the interests of the developers and institutions whose projects were built. With the election of a new mayor, “Jake” Garn in 1972, however, the tone changed.
[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/1640483-annexation-city-size-1950-2010-a.html; While Oklahoma City expanded its city size by over 555% between 1950 and 2000, Phoenix just shy of 500%, Salt Lake City annexed 56%, below Madison WI’s 61%.
[2] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles: a History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1984), p, 263 and p. 265.
[3] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 279.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Efforts to change the form of government and upgrade the capacity of its bureaucratic capacity were constant and persistent. “Home Rule” however, was defeated until 1979 when the City changed to a strong-mayor government (Mayor Ted Wilson). In these years “Salt Lake continued to experience problems of urban sprawl as many people and businesses moved to the suburbs[1], leaving a decaying inner city …. As suburbs increasingly became bedroom communities for people employed in the city, such things as transportation, coordination with the county on government services, and effective planning for urban renewal presented new problems to community leaders.”[2]
In the sixties, a civic auditorium (convention center/arts complex) and sewer infrastructure were proposed by a 1961 Advisory Committee on City Planning and Capital Improvements, but the proposals generated a variety of opponents, including the mayor. Several referendums later amended the original proposal so that only the sports and exhibition complex were built and opened in 1967. The Salt Palace, as it came to be called, built without federal dollars, “was an important turning point … Much of the surrounding area was soon rehabilitated.… It attracted major new restaurant, shopping, and hotel facilities in the vicinity … the completion of the first phase of the Triad Center in 1984. In addition, professional basketball and hockey teams were headquartered at the Salt Palace, and the Symphony Hall added in 1979 became the home of the world-renowned Utah Symphony Orchestra”.[3]
During these years, advocates for participation in the federal urban renewal program surfaced. “The movement included constructing more pleasant housing, and building newer commercial structures in the city’s core area. Proponents of urban renewal said that Salt Lake City could avoid the national trend to urban sprawl if the core city were made more pleasant”.[4] Mayor Lee (but not the business community) was opposed and in the course of the following referendum he campaigned against it “on the God-given right to own property” and a “scare campaign aimed at big government’s use of eminent domain. The 1965 urban renewal referendum was defeated six to one. Development in the CBD limped along in the following years, and lacking a master plan, what followed reflected the interests of the developers and institutions whose projects were built. With the election of a new mayor, “Jake” Garn in 1972, however, the tone changed.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Salt Lake City Chapter 19
Garn was open to urban planning, advocated a change in the form of government, city/county consolidation, the use of CETA funds, and called attention to a 1972 report which castigated the City for permitting Salt Lake City to become a metropolis of blighted neighborhoods. Mostly, since the major structural changes proved impossible in a still-commission government, Garn settled for capacity upgrades, joining the National League of Cities (for the first time in Salt Lake’s history), and trying to focus attention on airport modernization. His chief success in economic development was his 1973 creation of the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency, with eminent domain powers, and CDBG funding to upgrade and demolish housing.
Garn left to become Senator and a new mayor, Ted Wilson was elected in 1975. Wilson, able to finally change the form of government to strong mayor, was reelected (two more terms) becoming the City’s first strong mayor in 1980. By then, commercial redevelopment of the central city was long out of style, and during the eighties neighborhoods were the principal focus of Salt Lake City’s economic development program. Mostly, zoning, conformity to the 1967 master plan, and historic preservation were the central elements of the City’s neighborhood-based community development program. Neighborhood groups were formed and through the 1990’s economic development did not pursue commercial redevelopment in any consistent fashion. Tourism (and, of course, the state right to work law) were the other planks of the area’s economic development program. So, if there were any city that declined to participate in the Age of Urban Renewal, the honor goes to Salt Lake City.
[1] Ironically, for reasons unknown to me, Mormons tended more to suburbanization, and during these years sprawl made Salt Lake City less Mormon in population than previously—but with more minorities and poor.
[2] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 273.
[3] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 278.
[4] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 279.
End of Policy system Cut
=======================
The reader reading about Salt Lake City may be reminded of Oklahoma City; they do share several commonalities. Be wary, however. Salt Lake City exhibits its own cultural personality, reflecting its Mormonism to be sure, but also expressing a profound and consistent antagonism toward an activist government. Salt Lake City grew over 21% between 1940 and 1950, but in the decade following only 4% and in 1960-1970 the city declined 7%. Over the next two decades (1970-1990) Salt Lake City declined another 7% (1980) and 2% (1990) to about 159,000 residents. Four decades of declining population is not typical of western cities in this era. The Salt Lake metro area, around 227,000 in 1950, however, expanded to almost 790,000 by 1990. Salt Lake City did not chase its population through aggressive annexation[1] (or urban renewal); suburbanization went its natural course fairly unobstructed by central city resistance. If, as I have argued, urban renewal is a CBD-based strategy to counter suburbanization, one would not expect Salt Lake City to have much, if any, urban renewal history. You would be correct.
Paradoxically, a dominant characteristic of Salt Lake City, to me at least, is its atypically weak political (and policy) system—it operated with a commission form of government through most of the period—and yet this weak political system over twenty-five years was itself dominated by extremely conservative, iconoclastic, often maverick strong mayors. These mayors, at minimum, set the tone for the City’s politics, and often acted as if they ran the City in the style of a dictator. To me this suggests a political culture populated by individuals not focused on politics, and not especially concerned about the conduct of politics on a daily basis—rising up only if one’s ox was gored. This is Privatism at its most pure level, a Privatism which retained to a considerable degree the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian low-tax, minimal recourse to government—relying instead on the yeoman citizen. In the latter years of this period, starting in the 1970’s, however, it did become apparent that things were changing as will be evident in future chapters.
The election of former Governor J. Bracken Lee as mayor in 1959 continued the tradition developed by Mayor Earl J. Glade (1945-1956). Lee would serve until his semi-forced retirement in 1972. Behind the scenes “real power in the city lay not with the commission [city government] but with the extra-political triumvirate of Gus P. Backman (Executive Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce), David O. McKay, president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and John F. Fitzpatrick, publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune (… significantly the triumvirate consisted of a Mormon, an inactive Mormon, and a gentile)”.[2] Of the three Blackman served as the public voice, the go-to man, and the glue that held the triumvirate together and made it a powerful force in city-policy-making. Suspicious of change, Backman and the triumvirate propped up the commission government which itself was consumed with minor matters, departmental politics, scandals, tight budgets, and non-economic development policy. Water politics and airport modernization was the closest one usually got to economic development. Whatever happened in Salt Lake City was almost always accomplished by the natural workings of the private sector.
Efforts to change the form of government and upgrade the capacity of its bureaucratic capacity were constant and persistent. “Home Rule” however, was defeated until 1979 when the City changed to a strong-mayor government (Mayor Ted Wilson). In these years “Salt Lake continued to experience problems of urban sprawl as many people and businesses moved to the suburbs[3], leaving a decaying inner city …. As suburbs increasingly became bedroom communities for people employed in the city, such things as transportation, coordination with the county on government services, and effective planning for urban renewal presented new problems to community leaders.”[4]
In the sixties, a civic auditorium (convention center/arts complex) and sewer infrastructure were proposed by a 1961 Advisory Committee on City Planning and Capital Improvements, but the proposals generated a variety of opponents, including the mayor. Several referendums later amended the original proposal so that only the sports and exhibition complex were built and opened in 1967. The Salt Palace, as it came to be called, built without federal dollars, “was an important turning point … Much of the surrounding area was soon rehabilitated.… It attracted major new restaurant, shopping, and hotel facilities in the vicinity … the completion of the first phase of the Triad Center in 1984. In addition, professional basketball and hockey teams were headquartered at the Salt Palace, and the Symphony Hall added in 1979 became the home of the world-renowned Utah Symphony Orchestra”.[5]
During these years, advocates for participation in the federal urban renewal program surfaced. “The movement included constructing more pleasant housing, and building newer commercial structures in the city’s core area. Proponents of urban renewal said that Salt Lake City could avoid the national trend to urban sprawl if the core city were made more pleasant”.[6] Mayor Lee (but not the business community) was opposed and in the course of the following referendum he campaigned against it “on the God-given right to own property” and a “scare campaign aimed at big government’s use of eminent domain. The 1965 urban renewal referendum was defeated six to one. Development in the CBD limped along in the following years, and lacking a master plan, what followed reflected the interests of the developers and institutions whose projects were built. With the election of a new mayor, “Jake” Garn in 1972, however, the tone changed.
Garn was open to urban planning, advocated a change in the form of government, city/county consolidation, the use of CETA funds, and called attention to a 1972 report which castigated the City for permitting Salt Lake City to become a metropolis of blighted neighborhoods. Mostly, since the major structural changes proved impossible in a still-commission government, Garn settled for capacity upgrades, joining the National League of Cities (for the first time in Salt Lake’s history), and trying to focus attention on airport modernization. His chief success in economic development was his 1973 creation of the Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency, with eminent domain powers, and CDBG funding to upgrade and demolish housing.
Garn left to become Senator and a new mayor, Ted Wilson was elected in 1975. Wilson, able to finally change the form of government to strong mayor, was reelected (two more terms) becoming the City’s first strong mayor in 1980. By then, commercial redevelopment of the central city was long out of style, and during the eighties neighborhoods were the principal focus of Salt Lake City’s economic development program. Mostly, zoning, conformity to the 1967 master plan, and historic preservation were the central elements of the City’s neighborhood-based community development program. Neighborhood groups were formed and through the 1990’s economic development did not pursue commercial redevelopment in any consistent fashion. Tourism (and, of course, the state right to work law) were the other planks of the area’s economic development program. So, if there were any city that declined to participate in the Age of Urban Renewal, the honor goes to Salt Lake City.
[1] http://www.city-data.com/forum/general-u-s/1640483-annexation-city-size-1950-2010-a.html; While Oklahoma City expanded its city size by over 555% between 1950 and 2000, Phoenix just shy of 500%, Salt Lake City annexed 56%, below Madison WI’s 61%.
[2] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles: a History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado, Pruett Publishing Company, 1984), p, 263 and p. 265.
[3] Ironically, for reasons unknown to me, Mormons tended more to suburbanization, and during these years sprawl made Salt Lake City less Mormon in population than previously—but with more minorities and poor.
[4] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 273.
[5] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 278.
[6] Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons & Gentiles, op. cit., p. 279.
Ron W. Coan 