Jiffy, I agree that it could be a double edged sword, if we were to penalize developers for land banking.
There is a boat load of construction going on all over Salt Lake City. In fact, residential all around Downtown, it's immediate perimeter, Central City, the University of Utah, and Sugar House continues to be at record levels. True, at this time most of the construction is in the 4 to 10 story range, but still the numbers are definitely significant. Also, there is a back log of the high-rise type proposals that have not commenced construction, and that is frustrating. Given Salt Lake's booming economy, it's only a matter of time before the scales tip, and the taller projects move forward. Already, there has been an ever increasing number of national/international developers buying up large chunks of land and making their presence and plans known for Salt Lake's downtown.
Almost everyone is very appreciative of the world class projects that the LDS Church has developed for Salt Lake City's downtown. After all, Austin, Denver, and even a city as huge as my own Los Angeles has nothing in it's Downtown heart as beautiful as the expansive Temple Sq. and surrounding campus blocks. City Creek is still in a superior class of its own when it comes to retail/commercial. This despite all of the endless redevelopments, tear downs and do-overs of former core malls and retail cores all over the West Coast and the U.S. in general. That said, I think the growing number of deep pocketed national developers that are now entering the Salt Lake Market is a very good sign that we are all anxious to see further progress.
I can tell your anxious for Salt Lake City to succeed, and perhaps like me you even grew up there. Take a look at the Compilation Thread over on the general forum. Thanks to the great reporting of Isaac Riddle, and many local photographers, we have a pretty good accounting of the many recent, ongoing and upcoming development projects in Salt Lake City proper and surrounding metro. The link is:
http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...93987&page=258
If you guys would like, it would be very easy for me to organize a page one on this thread. It's been years since we've had one, and it's just a matter of copying and pasting the info. from my posts on the Comp. Thread. This would be a lot simpler for me than for Jubguy to have to start from scratch. I'll need Jubguy and Viperlords permission first.