- KC Gardner Company proposes a 16-story mixed-use tower in Salt Lake City's Sugar House neighborhood.
- The project includes 195 residential units and 8,975 square feet of retail space
- If approved, it will be the tallest building in Sugar House's growing district.
SALT LAKE CITY — Sugar House officials are considering increasing building height limits.
KC Gardner Company, on behalf of Zions Bank, which owns a parcel at 2200 S. Highland Drive, filed paperwork with the city last week, seeking to receive clearance to build a 182-foot mixed-use multifamily tower on the site of a Zions Bank branch building in Salt Lake City's Sugar House neighborhood.
"Gardner Group and Engine 8 Architecture, together with our capital and design partners, intend to deliver a thoughtful, high-quality project that contributes meaningfully to the continued growth of the Sugar House neighborhood," representatives of Engine 8 Architecture, a firm brought in to design the building, wrote in one of the documents filed with the city.
The 16-story tower, referred to as "GEM Sugar House," would have space for 195 residential units within the Sugar House Business District.
Seventy percent of those would be studio or one-bedroom units, while the remaining 30% would be split up between two- and three-bedroom units, according to project documents. The average unit would be approximately 800 square feet, and the units would be split up between short-term and long-term rental agreements.
There would be a mix of residential amenities, with another 8,975 square feet dedicated to retail space for public use. That includes room for Zions Bank to remain in the neighborhood and additional ground-floor retail options.
There's space to maintain the bank's drive-thru, and there would be a three-story parking garage located between that space and the residential units, per the documents.
Salt Lake City recently rezoned parts of the district from McClelland Street to 1300 East, allowing buildings up to 185 feet on that particular parcel because of height enhancements along Highland Drive, but a design review from the Salt Lake City Planning Commission is required for any building taller than 85 feet.
"GEM Sugar House serves as a model example ... providing a mix of desired uses that include market-rate, affordable and short-term housing; core-and-shell space for small, community-oriented retail uses ... and strong multimodal access to daily needs," Engine 8 Architecture officials added.
City records show the proposal is still being screened by the commission, but it wasn't immediately clear when the design will be considered for final review.
Zions Bank also submitted a letter in support of the project on its property.
If approved, it would become the tallest building in Sugar House and the latest development in the quickly growing district.
It's located between the Residence at Sugar Alley, which opened last year, and where the Utah Transit Authority plans to extend its S-Line. That's on top of the many new mixed-use developments constructed over the past decade in the district.
