Salt Lake City’s annual and typically upbeat snapshot of downtown economic life is hitting a little differently this year.

Numbers on visitation, spending and residential population in Utah’s urban core all moved upward again in 2025, keeping course with solid multi-year trends amid downtown’s marked turn toward a visitor economy.

But now the latest indicators — boosted by a growing number of downtown residents as well as large numbers of convention-goers and event attendees — are landing with an extra bounce, as the city center remains poised to absorb billions in additional investment dollars.

The heart of Utah’s capital, said Dee Brewer, executive director of the Salt Lake Chamber’s Downtown Alliance, “has entered the most consequential decade of investment in downtown’s history. ... Perhaps it is time to expand our definition of downtown.”

Judging from the group’s new economic report and projections from here, in fact, 2025 could become a sort of before-and-after benchmark, with metrics on the health and resilience of downtown accelerating from there.

Witness not least, Brewer noted, more than 23 major projects worth north of $10 billion now expected to rise in the downtown area, including a $4 billion sports, entertainment, culture and convention district with a brand-new 6,000-seat performance venue, hundreds of hotel rooms, a residential tower and more.

Here’s where some of the new numbers on downtown stand year over year, prior to what could be a transformational decade to come:

• Downtown’s residential population rose by another 9% in one year, to slightly above an estimated 23,000 residents. That number is now 63% higher than it was in 2019 and is expected to keep growing. That growth has also helped make the urban core’s mix of residents younger, better educated and less likely to own a car than the Wasatch Front as a whole.

• Nearly 30.7 million so-called “customer days” downtown in 2025, defined as either a visitor, worker or resident spending an hour or more in the area, measured with cellphone location data. A third of those days came from visitors, a quarter from workers and another 11% from residents.

• An estimated $2.1 billion total in downtown customer spending on retail, dining, entertainment and hotel accommodations, a rise of 6.1% over 2024.

• After event attendance downtown jumped 18% in 2024, it went up another 16.3% last year, with 4.7 million attendees to 16 major sports, arts and entertainment venues. A big chunk of that, the alliance said, was Utah Mammoth fans at the Delta Center, arts patrons at places like Abravanel Hall and Eccles Theater, and folks going to Clark Planetarium.

• Last year saw 412,000 conventioneers stream through the Salt Palace Convention Center, the highest count since 2019.

That venue is set to close starting in fall 2027 for a major overhaul. Brewer said that three-year upgrade to modernize and expand the convention center amounted to “a generational rebuild” — with major potential to lure more of the type of higher-spending visitors and travelers that already pump nearly $6.1 billion yearly into the area economy.

Along with that project folding into the emerging Smith Entertainment Group-backed sports and convention district going up around the Delta Center, downtown boosters are predicting other factors and large residential and commercial projects will have a sizable impact of their own.

The University of Utah has announced goals for building student housing and migrating colleges, programs and workers off the city’s east bench and into the downtown core. Western Governors University also recently released plans to develop a downtown campus with at least 3,000 employees, at the site of the former Sheraton Hotel.

From April to October, millions will stream through downtown Salt Lake City for a six-month open house on Temple Square, as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints unveils its massive renovations to the Salt Lake Temple and surrounding church facilities.

The alliance says an estimated 3 million to 5 million visitors expected to flood downtown for that open house could generate up to $320 million in added spending for downtown’s merchants, eateries and venues. There are major efforts underway to beautify Main Street along the way, partly with hopes of getting many of those Temple Square visitors to return.

Yet the Downtown Alliance’s report also highlights some challenges for downtown to fully capture advantages of the investment years ahead.

Among them:

• Working from home and hybrid office schedules have meant the urban core’s weekly worker counts are still down by about a third since 2019. That remains a damper on downtown retail and restaurant spending during the day.

• Even though office lease rates continue to rise, downtown is thought to be lacking in supplies of offices that offer new construction and top-quality fixtures, amenities or location. That, in turn, may be hampering the city’s ability to recruit high-value employers.

• That upcoming period of construction at the Salt Palace is going to be a knock on patronage for hotels, restaurants, taverns and shop owners downtown, while city officials are also anticipating a drop in sales tax receipts. Brewer said downtown merchants and hospitality providers are “evaluating strategies” to bridge that three-year gap and that building downtown “vibrancy” would be key.