This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake County is ready to cut a sweet deal Friday for almost 10 acres under Abravanel Hall and the Salt Palace Convention Center.
The county will buy the property for about $6.6 million from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a price that reflects what the land would have been worth in 1984, when the county and church last extended a 30-year lease for the LDS-owned land in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.
"I'd hate to think what the current fair market value would be," said County Council Chairman Max Burdick.
"We checked," responded Ben Stringham, the county's acting real-estate manager. "It was around $34 million."
Given the difference between those two numbers, the County Council quickly and unanimously authorized Stringham to take a $6,571,226.40 million check to Friday's scheduled closing.
"The church was very generous to make the land available," said longtime County Councilman Jim Bradley. "They played ball with us for a long, long time."
It was 1964 when the council's forerunner, the Salt Lake County Commission, selected the area between South Temple and 200 South from West Temple to 200 West as the site of a then-unnamed "civic auditorium-sports area-convention center."
On the day of the announcement, LDS Church President David O. McKay said the church would lease two large parcels it owned in that area to the county for 50 years. The cost: $1 a year plus the right to use the convention center for free 24 days a year. That saved the church the expense of building its own conference hall.
When the contract was amended in 1984, the county received the option to buy the land at its 1984 value, which was $3.3 million, plus interest.
For almost three years now, Stringham and his predecessor Lee Colvin have been working with church real-estate officials to finalize the purchase of those parcels, plus another small piece of church-owned land also beneath the Salt Palace.
Church spokesman Eric Hawkins expressed satisfaction at the county's decision to act on the land-acquisition option.
"We are pleased that they'll continue to use this property for the benefit of the community," he said.
The sales agreement also extends the church's right to use a small portion of the building for the next 30 years, Stringham said.
County Chief Financial Officer Darrin Casper said funding for the purchase will come from a sales-tax bond issued to pay for several land acquisitions.