On Thursday afternoon, the Jordan River at North Temple looked much as it normally does.
The modest, opaque waterway hosted a handful of geese as it trickled past a towering power plant, between Utah State Fairpark parking lots and along the thin asphalt ribbon of its eponymous trail.
But Thursday was also Day 1 of an ambitious project to place this half-mile stretch of river on par with some of America’s finest urban parks — a project that could restore the natural ecosystem of the waterway here and encourage people to enjoy it.
The Larry H. Miller Co., the firm developing the Power District at the site of Rocky Mountain Power’s Gadsby Power Plant, has hired the landscape architecture company Field Operations to plan both natural upgrades and gathering places on this industrialized portion of the river. The design firm helped bring The High Line in New York City, Waterfront Park in Seattle and Presidio Tunnel Tops in San Francisco to life.
“Our firm, Field Operations, has a long history of helping cities transform underutilized and overlooked natural corridors into meaningful, high-performing public spaces,” Richard Kennedy, a partner at the company, said in remarks. “We have seen, firsthand, how rivers and waterfronts once viewed as back-of-house or as infrastructure can become defining front doors.”
Current renderings of the Power District show people kayaking in the river, walking on wider paths along it and enjoying a meal at outdoor seating on its banks. The Miller company said that it plans to make water quality improvements and add native species of plants and fish to the waterway, too.
(The Larry H. Miller Co.) A rendering of the Power District. The Larry H. Miller Co. hired Field Operations, a landscape architecture firm, to revitalize a half-mile stretch of the Jordan River.
“They see the riparian part of this stretch of the river as being vital, and that’s really encouraging,” Jordan River Commission Executive Director Soren Simonsen said. “It will be the most urban part of the Jordan River, without a doubt.”
The riverside upgrades would be a part of a larger redevelopment plan for this barren portion of North Temple that includes almost 5,000 new housing units, millions of square feet of retail and office space and a Major League Baseball field.
The firm did not say when residents could expect more detailed plans or construction to begin, but noted that it would take community input on the waterway’s restoration.