[PHX31]

The thing that City Creek did well was have one giant grand opening with everything ready and open at the same time (except maybe the residential... or is that open there too?).

When CityScape opened it was basically a soft opening with a few retail spots open here and there and a restaurant or two... most of it was still under construction and "coming soon", which makes for a less than impressive opening. There wasn't a huge build up with everything exploding at the seams to open and the public beating down the door to get in. It's now a year or more later and stuff is still not open, or just opening.

Not to mention City Creek has the backing of the mormon church's money, which makes financing and design and development much easier when you basically have unlimited money and vision. Things will get built as they were planned, value engineering will probably be much more limited, and the City can ask/make them make it as nice as possible.

I was at CityScape this weekend watching some of the cornhole and hanging out... we also went to Vitamin T (hadn't tried it yet) for some tacos and beer. The restaurant was cool and the patio was serviceable, but looking across 1st St to the barren, dusty, empty, weed-growing lot that is to be "future" portions of CityScape, it was a huge downer. Even the area where they had Cornhole (Central) just feels "cooler" and better to hang out in. That whole east side of CityScape (Vitamin T, Yogurt place, Arrogant Butcher, Tilted Kilt) has the worst view ever, it makes it almost uncomfortable to hangout there with that desolate view. It is such a downer that we ended up leaving sooner than we would have if the whole area was hopping with bars and buildings and people, rather than a gigantic empty parking lot. We walked over to Ghost Bar/Seamus, which has a much better "feel" to the area.

I know City Creek doesn't have this problem.