The most recent chapter of Tooele City’s Broadway Hotel saga has ended, with its owner’s criminal case resolved and the site once again on the verge of rehabilitation, according to Environmental Protection Agency documents.
The documents state the land, on the corner of Date and Broadway streets, will likely be sold to Tooele City for $300,000. Most of that money will, in turn, go to the EPA, who cleaned up the asbestos-laden site, and the city will then develop the parcel “for the public interest,” the documents say.
What exactly the city plans to do with the site is unclear, but city spokesperson Shilo Baker told The Salt Lake Tribune this week that officials hoped the site would one day host commercial and residential units.
One outcome is certain, however: Daniel Brett, the 69-year-old owner of the ill-fated project, is bowing out of the development business for good.
Brett “regrets ever getting involved in the project in the first place given the financial and emotional toll it has taken on him and his family,” according to a sentencing memo written by his attorneys.
“Nonetheless he understands his actions were negligent,” the memo continues, “in that he didn’t exercise more care in making decisions related to the demolition considering the high likelihood of asbestos in the building.”
U.S. District Judge David Sam on Monday sentenced Brett to pay $40,000 in restitution to a worker who was hired to clean up the site but lacked appropriate protective equipment. The worker wore only a dust mask as he sprayed the toxic site with water, sending clouds of black dust — and brittle, easily crumbling asbestos fibers — into the air. The money could be used for “medical monitoring for the decades to come,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.
Brett, who was facing three counts alleging violations of the Clear Air Act, instead pleaded guilty to one count of negligent endangerment, a misdemeanor, with Sam agreeing to drop the other counts.
While federal prosecutors had asked Brett be sentenced to a year in prison, Sam declined to incarcerate the man and imposed no other conditions on his sentence, including probation.
Defense attorney Eric Benson said Brett was “pleased” with that outcome.
“It was just a giant disaster. His partner ends up dying. He’s stuck with a demolished building that he has to figure out how to how to pay for to clean up. He didn’t have the money, and then the EPA comes in and cleans it up properly,” Benson said. “So that’s really his crime — is not knowing exactly what to do with an old building that did contain some asbestos.”
Retirement project turned carcinogenic ‘money pit’
When Brett and his business partner Kevin Peterson took on the project, the building was a far cry from its grand 20th Century beginnings in Tooele City’s then-booming “New Town.”
The building, dubbed “the best hotel building outside of Salt Lake” by the The Salt Lake Herald-Republican in 1909, was now an eyesore, providing shelter to squatters.
Stevenson planned to renovate the building into affordable housing, and Brett, retired after years of military service followed by nearly two decades as an aerospace engineer with Northrop Grumman, was looking for a outlet to occupy his time.
In 2018, Peterson, who went to church with Brett, approached Brett about redeveloping the Broadway Hotel, according to court documents. Brett agreed, Benson said — and got more than he bargained for.
First, he and Peterson faced the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic slowdowns that ensued. Then, that spring, arsonists set fire to the historic building, “completely derailing their plans” and leaving “a literal giant mess to clean up,” according to court papers filed by Brett’s attorneys.
Peterson died in 2021, “leaving Mr. Brett to handle the ill-fated project alone with very little direction.”
While Brett knew the building likely had asbestos — a fact known since at least 2011 — prosecutors said he moved forward with demolition plans in December 2020.
“A retired engineer, Mr. Brett did not personally have anywhere near sufficient funds to continue work on the project, having found himself at the center of a money pit and at the helm of a project well outside of his wheelhouse,” the court documents read. “It was a mess on multiple levels.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) People recreate at a park near a subdivision in Tooele on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2023.
Prosecutors told the story differently. According to their arguments, Brett “put profits above people” and moved forward with demolition while disregarding the health and safety of those he hired.
While he sought an asbestos survey prior to demolition, one was never completed, and he ultimately hired a company with little experience doing demolitions — one that wasn’t qualified to work with asbestos and that proceeded with the cleanup as if asbestos wasn’t present, prosecutors wrote.
Brett then let the pile sit, unwetted as required by federal law, for more than a year — allowing the lingering asbestos to threaten trespassers, passersby and neighbors, including the young children who attended nearby elementary schools, prosecutors wrote.
The EPA stepped in to remove the harmful debris in February 2022 at a cost of approximately $1.1 million, according to the charging documents.
While Brett’s plea reflects his “conduct during the few days of demolition itself,” prosecutors asserted that his his criminal conduct “continued for more than a year before EPA remedied the site.” They asked for the one-year sentence to send a message to “others similarly situated” who may to choose to prioritize “profit over safety.”
The EPA accepted public comment on the site’s proposed sale to Tooele City through Wednesday. Next, they could move forward with, change or withdraw the proposal.
