But there are times when the business veers off into outright whoppers.

Ad man Mark Hurst's comparison of a Sandy business park to Manhattan falls into that category. A complex of three high-rise condo and office buildings, a hotel and a Broadway theater sprawling next to Interstate 15 is "exactly like New York," Hurst told the Sandy City Council last week.

More amazing - council members bought it.

"This is unbelievably exciting," Council Chairman Chris McCandless said.

He's not the first to fall for high-flying words.

Nine years ago, Salt Lake City Council members latched on to "a little bit of Paris" - an architect's description for the LDS Church's Main Street Plaza. More recently, a representative of Taubman Centers Inc. compared a modest concrete staircase in a corner of the City Creek mall to the Spanish Steps in Rome.

The rest of the project - with its retractable glass ceiling and sky bridge - is "European."

Sometimes, even the development seems puffed up - like Lehi's plans for a sports-entertainment complex with a wakeboarding lake and the tallest building in Utah, a hotel designed by starchitect Frank Gehry.

It's the job of developers to sell their plans. In Sandy, developer Scott McQuarrie and his hired pitchman didn't stop with New York, naming the project "The Proscenium," pulling ancient Greece into the mix.

But it's the job of elected officials to be skeptical, to look out for taxpayers, to consider the Constitution. And too often, they're seduced by pretty words and pictures. As a result, many times they end up looking like dupes.

University of Utah Marketing Professor Teresa Pavia says referencing iconic places is routine practice in marketing - it's a form of shorthand communication, evoking an immediate image of a place. But it's a double-edged sword. If the place doesn't live up to the sell, the strategy can backfire.

In the case of the Main Street Plaza, ACLU attorneys were able to flip the Paris analogy, calling the block "a little bit of Beijing" when the free speech limitations of the place became clear.

Pavia compares extravagant P.R. pitches to Motel 6's promise from Tom Bodett: "We'll leave the light on for you."

"We're clear on what that offer is," she says. "But if you offer somebody the world and then you don't come through, they get angry. The problem with iconic standards is: You set expectations a certain way."

There is no way for The Proscenium to live up to the standard Hurst set, except possibly with Utahns who never go to New York. For those who have been to Broadway, the comparison is laughable.

Pavia says it's a bit like Las Vegas' parenthetical campaign: "Why go to Paris when you can go to Paris (without all those obnoxious French people)?" Sandy is like New York - without all the New Yorkers and tall buildings and great restaurants and night life.

"For the people a little put off by the price or time or sheer intrusiveness of New York, this can actually be better than New York," she says. "For people who like to go to New York, going to Sandy just isn't going to cut it."

walsh@sltrib.com