What do you think about the recommendations contained in the Phase 1 Community Visioning Report?

Topic Update: The community visioning process for Phase 1 of the Sugar House streetcar (Central Pointe TRAX station to McClelland Street) culminated recently with a report by Citiventure Associates, LLC. What do you think about the recommendations contained in the Phase 1 Community Visioning Report?

Mayor Becker has made the return of the streetcar to Salt Lake City a priority and Sugar House is where it all begins!

Leaders and residents in Salt Lake City have long imagined benefitting from the economic development and vital connections that would be produced through the development of streetcars. The modern streetcar provides the same kind of local transportation that the original streetcar provided to Salt Lake City around the turn of the century.

Since 2008, Salt Lake City and the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City (RDA) have been working with the Utah Transit Authority and South Salt Lake City to take steps necessary for seeking federal funds to assist with the construction of a streetcar that would serve Sugar House and South Salt Lake City.

In October 2010, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that Salt Lake City will receive $26 million from the highly competitive TIGER II grant program to fund the Sugar House Streetcar project. The grant means the streetcar project — once thought to be 25 years away — will soon become reality for Salt Lake City.

The Sugar House Streetcar will consist of a two-mile modern streetcar line to be constructed in an abandoned railroad corridor purchased by UTA between 2100 South and Interstate-80. The project will connect the Sugar House business district, a thriving regional commercial center, to the highly successful regional TRAX light rail system. This link will stimulate transit-oriented development, drive economic activity in Sugar House, and further strengthen the extent and intensity of use of the existing light rail and bus network and the pedestrian and bicycle connections to that network, providing an increasingly competitive transit alternative for residents and visitors of Salt Lake City. New streetcar development in other U.S. cities has successfully spurred significant economic investment along the transit corridors; Salt Lake City leaders are projecting similar results.

The streetcar development will establish a new transit corridor in Sugar House and spur exciting economic activity while making public transit more accessible.

The community visioning process for Phase 1 (Central Pointe TRAX station to McClelland Street) culminated recently with a report by Citiventure Associates, LLC (see http://www.shstreetcar.com/updates.htm and click on the “Phase 1 Community Visioning Report” link for more information), wherein recommendations are made, on a block-by-block basis, regarding the right-of-way improvements within the Sugarmont Corridor as well as potential redevelopment opportunities adjacent to the corridor.

What do you think about the recommendations contained in the Phase 1 Community Visioning Report?

For updates and information, return to http://www.shstreetcar.com/.