UIPA trying to make one-time landfill its 1st big land purchase

Brice Wallace

The Utah Inland Port Authority is moving ahead with its first large-scale property purchase.

At its most recent meeting, the port authority board adopted a resolution to purchase several hundred acres in the Salt Lake City Northwest Quadrant that will be the focus of its activities in the state’s capital city.

The property once was a landfill but has been owned the past several years by the{mprestriction ids="1,3"} Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), an independent agency managing the state’s 4.5 million acres of surface and mineral estate on behalf of the public education system and other state institutions.

The resolution calls for Ben Hart, UIPA’s executive director, to negotiate an agreement with SITLA on the property and for UIPA staff to proceed with pre-acquisition environmental work there.

Hart described the property as “this biggest foundational piece” and said the goal is to make the property “an economic driver.” The port’s use of the land, he added, “is going to come to define the port in many ways.”

“This parcel is going to be more important than any other parcel in the state of Utah for future generations’ economy,” he said. “It’ll be more important than The Point [of the Mountain]. It’ll be more important than downtown Salt Lake City. We can turn this around and make this a huge driver for future generations — career opportunities, innovation, development, whatever it may be. We feel like this is a nexus that brings all of those pieces together.”

SITLA acquired the property in 2018. It is north of Interstate 80 near the 7200 West interchange and bounded by 700 North to the north. It consists of about 770 acres, which includes more than 600 acres that contains municipal solid waste at the former North Temple Landfill, which was operated by the Salt Lake City Corp. between 1959 and 1979 and accepted waste from Salt Lake City and other local entities.

SITLA has proposed cleaning up the site in a phased approach. It selected the Ninigret Group to assist it with the remediation and subsequent development of the property. UIPA has been working with SITLA to acquire an easement for development of a rail line across the property.

Miles Hansen, the board chairman, said the authority’s mandate is to “shape the development in the Northwest Quadrant in a way that maximizes public utility for generations” but the authority hasn’t had an asset it controlled. He also noted that SITLA has a different mission, one in which it tries to maximize financial returns to support Utah’s public schools.

Several board members warned that without port authority ownership, the area could turn into a sea of warehouses and distribution centers.

“And I don’t think that’s good for the area,” said Mike Schultz, a board member and state representative. “That would bring additional truck traffic and create more road congestion. One of Inland Port’s goals is to bring rail access into that area and be some sort of a facility that will help get more product on the trains.”

Hansen said SITLA’s fiduciary responsibility includes maximizing the value of its assets in order to generate funds for education, but that means that the landfill property would be developed in a short timeline, which means “more warehouse and distribution.”

“That is how you monetize that asset in a short timeline, and that’s not good for that particular part of Salt Lake City or the Northwest Quadrant, and it’s certainly not what the public wanted. … And the inland port now has an opportunity to take that asset, that keystone, if you will, of the development of the Northwest Quadrant and we can take a focus on maximizing the public return by making that into a very high-quality generational development,” Hansen said.

“And we’ve got the resources in place where we can begin the remediation, and we can be far more strategic with the approach than SITLA could, given its unique mandate to maximize returns in a shorter time.”

Victoria Petro, a nonvoting board member and Salt Lake City council member, said authority ownership would be beneficial “so that we don’t end up with a warehouse district, so we don’t end up with an environmental catastrophe compounded by jobs with no economic mobility for our neighbors.”

“We are going to make sure that this gets done right,” Hart said, “because we feel like future generations are going to benefit and be the benefactor, the recipients, of something that is really, really good. But if we start going down the wrong track and all we get is warehouse/distribution again, then we failed, and we’ve missed an incredible opportunity.”

As for cleaning up the landfill site, Hart acknowledged that “the environmental component with regards to this property is going to be significant.” But he and board members said the cleanup likely would be quicker under port authority ownership than SITLA ownership.

“I am very much in favor of getting us on board with this as quickly as we can, get that property purchased, and get on a way to cleanup,” said board member Jerry Stevenson, also a state senator.

“The current proposal out by SITLA is to just do Phase 1 and not do the other phases on the remediation,” Schultz said. “It is Inland Port’s goal to do all of those as quickly as possible, all those phases, and so the cleanup will happen much quicker under the inland port. Inland Port has the money and can start the remediation process extremely quickly.”

Board member Abby Osborne said the site is “such a key component” in allowing the authority to control what happens in the Northwest Quadrant, what goes into and out of the area, gets trucks off the road “and do this in a sustainable way that helps protect the environment, but also continues to allow Utah to flourish in the economic sense.”{/mprestriction}