This massive commercial facility, consisting of 18 soccer fields, 8 baseball diamonds, 3 new roads, 2 new bridges across the Jordan River, parking for several thousand cars, and a soccer stadium large enough to seat 7,500 people, will sprawl across 160 acres of prime Jordan River bottomlands.  The site was earlier proposed by a coalition of stakeholder groups as a site for a nature center and for wildlife, fisheries and wetlands restoration.  It has already been partially restored with native plants in a joint venture by Tree Utah and the Salt Lake County Fish and Game Association.

This land was originally purchased with taxpayer dollars from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, specifically and primarily for the purpose of flood control.  During the mid 1980’s a wet cycle that caused a dramatic rise in the levels of the Great Salt Lake left this entire site under several feet of water for at least two years.

Can you say, “Katrina”?    Consider the certifiable insanity of this proposal.  When the site floods again the commercial operators of the facility will come hat in hand to the public for more taxpayer dollars—your dollars-- to bail them out.   Shouldn’t we say no to this whole idea now, before it’s too late?

And guess what:  even before it floods out in the next wet cycle, your tax dollars will pay for half to two-thirds of the project.   In 2003 Salt Lake City taxpayers approved a bond for $15.3  million for this project, with an additional $7.5 million to be contributed by the Salt Lake Real soccer team.  But the bond was NOT site-specific.  This highly questionable project, if it has any merit at all, could EASILY be put in dozens of alternative locations around Salt Lake Valley.  

Indeed, early in the development of this project city planners identified and programmed a completely different site over a mile distant from the Jordan River west of Redwood Road between 500 south and 800 south.  That site is still available.  It is already city-owned land, it is mostly vacant, nearly 75 acres in size and easily large enough for a soccer competition facility consisting of a dozen or more soccer fields, parking  and other facilities.

Below:  Panoramic view of existing alternative site, 75 acres of city owned land between 500 and 800 South, Redwood Rd and I-215 

Although similar facilities all over the U.S. have been built for one tenth of this cost and with minimal to no taxpayer subsidy, the Sports Complex project budget has ballooned to $39 million, with Salt Lake City now obligated to raise an additional $16 million even while the scope of the project has been radically cut from the original plan for 30 soccer fields and 16 baseball diamonds originally approved by voters.

Mayor Becker says that our rapidly growing population of soccer players desperately need more soccer fields.   But if that is true, why build a commercial sports complex primarily dedicated to commercial soccer competitions rather than public use, and why build it at the north end of Salt Lake Valley, far distant from the neighborhoods that most need public soccer fields?

 Tragically, these are but two of 15 similar floodplain development projects that we know about because they were identified--and thereby endorsed--on the planning maps included in the Blueprint Jordan River report.  These 16 projects were extensively discussed and detailed in private meetings of a "Economic Development Subcommittee" of the "Blueprint Jordan River" planning effort.   I know this because I attended several of those meetings myself as a participant in the overall planning effort.   It was not entirely obvious at the time, but in retrospect, after studying the final report, the Blueprint Jordan River planning effort was a  free-for-all pig-fest for the economic development officers of each city up and down the river.  In meeting after meeting they cued up their pet riverfront commercialization projects to be baptized, annoited and  green-washed by the planners.