Salt Lake City’s long campaign to save a vintage 1950s-era police station by converting it into new housing could finally be clinched with a deeply discounted land sale.
Under the proposed deal, developers would buy the Central City neighborhood’s historic Northwest Pipeline building at 315 E. 200 South — used for decades as the city’s police and firefighting headquarters — along with 2.42 acres around it for $1 million, instead of the roughly $18 million the property is worth.
That below-market sale would, in turn, make financially viable the construction of a mixed-use apartment complex and renovation of the dilapidated 67-year-old former Public Safety Building for a total of 196 affordable residential units, with half of them family-friendly dwellings of two bedrooms or more.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The former Public Safety Building in Salt Lake City, also known as the Northwest Pipeline building.
That’s at least according to the city’s latest cost-benefit analysis, which is now scheduled for a Feb. 17 public hearing before the City Council. The new all-electric complex would be called The Grove, with total projected costs of $92 million.
A version was first announced in mid-2024 and is being led by the development arm of the city’s Housing Authority and two partners: New York-based Xylem Projects and Common Ground Institute, founded by former Utah Congressman Ben McAdams.
(Salt Lake City) Rendering of The Grove, a mixed-use development in Salt Lake City that would adaptively reuse the 67-year-old Northwest Pipeline building.
Sixteen of the dwellings at The Grove could be available to renters under a program of wealth-building escrow accounts. That’s along with other major gains for the neighborhood just east of downtown such as a public plaza, dog park, colorful murals and other art, and ground-floor spaces for businesses and services including a grocery store and a potential day care.
City officials also say that along with an infusion of new housing, the deal would mean a historic building — eyed for preservation virtually since police moved out for new headquarters at 475 S. 300 East in 2013 — would finally be revived.
“This is probably one of the most ideal projects I’ve seen in a long time,” council Chair Alejandro Puy told developers. “You’re checking all the boxes. This is a game-changer for the city.”
Solving for ‘affordability’
(Salt Lake City) Aerial rendering of a plaza proposed as part of The Grove, a mixed-use development in Salt Lake City that would adaptively reuse the 67-year-old Northwest Pipeline building.
It’s taken almost a decade of shifting financial backdrops to piece this latest vision together.
Though once eligible for deeper federal housing tax credits, The Grove no longer qualifies for those subsidies due to shifts in the demographics of surrounding Central City, according to Tammy Hunsaker, director of the city’s Department of Community and Neighborhoods. Rising construction costs, at the same time, have outpaced rent increases in Utah’s capital over the last five years or more, Hunsaker said, “so there’s a lot of challenges with affordable housing projects.”
The Northwest Pipeline building is an eight-story, 95,000-square-foot structure considered to be a top example of International Style design, one of two examples in the city. The office building was originally constructed by Pacific Northwest Pipeline as its headquarters in the late 1950s and was purchased by the city in 1979.
It housed police, dispatch and firefighting operations for decades and was listed on the National Register of Historic Place in 2011. The vintage structure will be a challenge to adaptively reuse, not least as it has sat vacant and boarded for more than a decade, with a weathered exterior and aging facilities.
(Salt Lake City) Salt Lake City is proposing the discounted sale of its former Public Safety Building at the northeast corner of 300 East and 200 South, along with two adjacent pieces of land largely devoted to surface parking.
Dan Nackerman, executive director of the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City, said the renovation would involve removal of hazardous materials along with following historic reconstruction standards. A prior redevelopment deal on the property fell through around 2015, Nackerman noted, due to market swings and the underlying costs of fixing up the historic building, making its prospective apartments “unattainable.”
“We have solved that attainability problem,” he said. " We think there will be an exciting and thriving community where basically a hole in the neighborhood existed."
Fewer apartments, added safety features
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City's former Public Safety Building.
Getting there has involved major changes to the project. Nackerman said after extensive input from neighbors, the developers have made a number of public safety improvements to their design, including enhanced entry systems, lighting, safe pedestrian paths, fencing and better sight lines.
When first proposed in 2024, The Grove had three buildings; now there are two. The renovated older structure would have 63 units, while the second newer one would hold 133 dwellings, along with a 100-stall parking garage.
All 196 apartments at The Grove would be rent subsidized for 50 years or more, to be affordable to those making 80% of area median incomes or below. Twenty-one units in the renovated building and 42 in the new complex would rent at rates affordable to those making at between 30% and 50% of the neighborhood’s median wages.
Those rents are to be kept affordable, city officials say, by seeking a host of other tax breaks on top of receiving discounted land and adopting a slow repayment schedule.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The former Public Safety building in Salt Lake City on Monday, June 3, 2024.
Though full financing for The Grove isn’t finalized, developers need to take control over the site to be able to seek additional, so-called gap financing for the project, according to city documents. If the discounted sale is approved after public input, the city would issue a promissory note for the land, requiring the developers to pay $1 a year for the first 15 years.
The developers would then offer half their yearly surplus cash flow for 39 years after that toward paying off the note, and then be on the hook for the balance of the note after 55 years at an interest rate of 3% per year.
Hunsaker called of the financing deal “a win-win structure” with building to start no later than December 2028 and the project to be finished by 2031.
Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.