Slowdown on S.L. safety complex urged

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 2, 2009 | by Aaron Falk Deseret News

A month after Mayor Ralph Becker unveiled plans for a $125- million public safety complex east of the downtown library, residents urged Salt Lake City leaders to hold off on finalizing the site of the much-needed police headquarters.

"I think we have bad planning or a lack of planning," Library Board member John Becker said during a public meeting Monday. "I really do believe that if this is delayed, we will come up with the right decision for our city."

While a small group brainstormed ideas for alternate site locations and design priorities, the overwhelming message from about 50 Salt Lakers was to slow down and steer clear of the beloved library block.

The mayor said he still intends to make his recommendation to the City Council sometime Wednesday morning.

"What that recommendation is, I still don't know," he said.

Becker laid out a pair of options east of the Main Library -- one on either side of 300 East -- for the $125-million complex May 7. The "preferred" site, he said at the time, would be on Library Square.

Since that announcement, however, the public response has been "vociferous," he said, with critics leveling a bevy of seismic and aesthetic concerns.

That response has caused the mayor to "rethink" his original plan.

When he makes his recommendation Wednesday, Becker said he could offer up his choice for where the emergency operations center and public safety headquarters should be built, or he could suggest pulling the plan off the table.

"I've been reconsidering the idea of a civic campus," he told the Desert News.

Should the mayor recommend a site along 300 East, it would not please his critics, some of who have complained about being called into the public process at the "last minute."

"How can any other options really be under consideration if the mayor is prepared to make his decision after whatever we say tonight," Gerald McDonough said Monday. "This (meeting) really doesn't matter."

Becker's recommendation would come in advance of a June 16 public hearing on the matter before the City Council, the body that will ultimately decide if the bond proposal to finance the project ends up on the ballot in November.

"We still have two months of dialogue and debate," Councilman Soren Simonsen said. "It's still not a certainty that we would move forward with the bond election this year."