The past few days have been exciting for Salt Lake City. Two massive blocks in the heart of our downtown finally opened after years of transformative construction. City Creek Center was an ambitious project to replace two breathless indoor malls and revitalize the downtown area. The people of Salt Lake have been eagerly anticipating its completion, and it opened with much fanfare and huge crowds on Thursday. Salt Lake was
soooo ready for this, and over night, our downtown has increased its vibrancy and urbanity more than we could've hoped.
Most of these photos have already been posted in the Mountain West forum or on the Salt Lake comp thread, but thought this would be a good opportunity to sum things up. Watching the construction of this project over the past few years has been exhilarating, largely because of the attention to detail and quality of design throughout. In a word it feels "real," despite the fact that there are artificial waterfalls and a symbolic creek running from end to end. At a cost of nearly $1.5 billion, it was one of the largest privately-funded construction projects of its kind to be built in the past few years. It was funded by the LDS church and built in partnership with Taubman Centers.
With dueling visions at certain points, the developers made compromises along the way to create a mixed-use center, with two condo towers, apartments, office space, and retail space. One vision preferred an open-air development to be integrated with the streets of the city, while the latter preferred a comfortable, marketable shopping center to be resilient during Salt Lake's four seasons. The result is an indoor-outdoor shopping center with retractable arched roofs over the main galleria, with the ability to be climate controlled during extreme weather. On either end are large, open gathering areas with fountains and waterfalls. But I don't need to tell you that... enjoy!
Grand opening:
Nordstrom west entrance
A bit older, obviously...
Construction Highlights:
One of the major highlights of construction was the lifting of the skybridge into place over Main Street. At 16,000 tons, it took two massive cranes about an hour to lift, turn perpendicular, and place the bridge.
These two corner buildings were not part of the development, but were spruced up to go with the flow.
Harmon's is downtown's first full-service grocery store. The corner land on the nearside will eventually be home to an office tower; on the far corner, residential.
The building on the right is the base for another condo tower, which will be built to about 18-20 stories when demand warrants.
If you want to see more, you can find pictures of nearly every aspect of the development here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5895816...7629374778495/
And be sure to check out T-Mac's photos as well, if you haven't already done so. I hope he'll make a compilation too!
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