Will those smokestacks in Salt Lake City’s baseball stadium renderings stay or go? Here’s the story — and the debate

The smokestacks stuck out.

When Big League Utah — the coalition of community figures led by the Miller family trying to bring a Major League Baseball team to Salt Lake City — first released the renderings, people couldn’t help but discuss the three smokestacks behind center field.

Some liked them. One fan said that they “make for a visually interesting wrinkle all great MLB ballparks have.” Others would rather remove them, saying “people come to Salt Lake City for the outdoors and want to see mountains” without a smokestack-obstructed view.

For what it’s worth, fans on Twitter were polled on whether they would “prefer smokestacks or no smokestacks in the backdrop of a potential SLC MLB stadium?” A total of 3,932 respondents shared their views: 53% preferred no smokestacks, 31% supported the stacks, while 16% declined to answer.

So what’s the deal with the smokestacks?

Well, they were first built by the then-Utah Power and Light Company between 1951 and 1955 at the Gadsby Power Plant — named after George M. Gadsby, a former president of the company. When built, just two of the power generators there burned enough coal to power considerably more than the requirements of the entire Salt Lake area.

For a few years starting in 1987, the power station sat dormant there. Then in 1990, Utah Power and Light announced its intention to restart usage of the stacks, converting all three into natural-gas burning stacks.

They still operate today and will continue to generate power well into the future. In fact, Rocky Mountain Power’s integrated resource plan states the stacks will remain functional until 2032, when they’re slated to be retired. That production of power, and that timeline, may well be the major reason the stacks are sticking around.

But publicly, officials are supporting the smokestacks for sentimental reasons. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox even called them “iconic” at last week’s news conference — though, in truth, it’s difficult to find public discussion of the smokestacks before last week.

“In discussions we have had with members of the community, as well as community and city leaders, the majority have voiced preference of keeping them as a marker of the area’s industrial heritage over the past 100 years,” PacifiCorp Communications Director Tiffany Erickson told The Salt Lake Tribune. The new logo of the Power District, where Big League Utah hopes to build its ballpark someday, also features the three smokestacks.

Some observers have worried that the white smokestacks could interfere with the batter’s ability to see the baseball being pitched, though the renderings show a green space in center field that would likely eliminate those concerns at field level. So the No. 1 call for removing the smokestacks is aesthetics — to preserve an unobstructed view of the mountains from the ballpark. That view was said to be one of the selling points of the Power District.

It seems clear, though, that the stacks are here to stay.

Dale Murphy, a two-time MLB National League MVP and ambassador of the project, said that he liked the smokestacks. To him, they looked like baseball bats. (Some fans suggested painting them as such.)

If they’re kept, and if Salt Lake City does indeed get an MLB team, the Utah park wouldn’t be the only MLB stadium with smokestacks as part of its backdrop. The Cincinnati Reds have two mock smokestacks in right-center field — when first installed, steam spewed out of them when Reds pitchers got a strikeout. Beginning in 2012, fire blew out of the stacks when the Reds got a home run. In 2015, one of the smokestacks caught on fire during a game, causing several sections of seats to be evacuated.