Salt Lake City's mayor and staff, Salt Lake City Council members, the Salt Lake Chamber and the Downtown Alliance also agree. I owned and operated a successful small business for more than 20 years.
To address those concerns, I have been commissioned as the small-business ombudsman to watch over the interests of existing businesses as downtown Salt Lake City is revitalized over the coming years. Government, business and community leaders have united to support and protect these businesses as part of the Downtown Rising initiative.
The City Creek Center, the Broadway Street improvements, the 222 Office Building, the future Federal Court Building enlargement and the TRAX/intermodal hub are all being guided by the goal of protecting surrounding businesses.
City officials and the business community do not want a repeat of what happened during Main Street TRAX construction. The University TRAX Line extension was allowed to move forward only with a promise from Mayor Rocky Anderson that the Main Street experience would not be repeated.
Business and property owners were brought into the University Line planning process. Their input became the model used today for all large infrastructure projects within the city. That model has been heralded as the new standard for urban construction projects and copied by cities around the country. One example of that model at work is the TRAX extension project (referred to in Ms. Walsh's June 19 column) currently under way on 400 West and 200 South. Here again UTA, its contractor and Salt Lake City engineers consulted with business and property owners to prevent problems before the project started.
Their input has been ongoing. Constricted by a tighter work space and more concentrated traffic flows, this project has assuredly posed a more difficult challenge, traffic-wise, than on a roomier 400 South.
A Community Advisory Committee was formed and has met monthly since before the project began to discuss issues and concerns and advise the contractor about their needs. Individual businesses are consulted when conditions require specific coordination. Construction schedules or procedures have been changed several times to accommodate events and special needs.
An impact mitigation fund of $125,000 was included in project costs. Free, off-street, lighted parking was made available and paid for by the fund to accommodate 200 South businesses for the temporary loss of curbside parking.
More than $1,000 has been spent for parking validations for 400 West businesses impacted by the loss of street parking. Some $100,000 is being spent on a business owner-designed, multimedia marketing campaign. Low-interest loans from the city's construction impact mitigation fund have been made available to businesses in need, with payments not scheduled to begin until after the project is complete.
An overwhelming number of businesses in the TRAX project area report steady or even increasing sales. Unfortunately no urban improvement project of this size can happen without some impact, and more impact to some businesses than others.
Yet, in a short time the results of the light-rail extension should generate new business and commerce for those same businesses when the TRAX line meets the FrontRunner next spring. In the meantime, as one loyal patron recently put it, the food at the Hong Kong Tea Room is worth the trip.
A great deal of planning and expense have gone into preventing inconvenience and reducing the impact of the construction slated for the downtown area.
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* BILL KNOWLES is the Downtown Rising ombudsman.
