Brice Wallace
The Utah Inland Port Authority has put the brakes on big-ticket spending items until a master plan is in place to help guide the future of its 1,600-acre jurisdictional area.
At the authority board’s most recent meeting, Ben Hart, the authority’s new executive director, said several leases already negotiated would be returned to the board for reconsideration at some point as the master plan is developed for its property in Salt Lake City’s Northwest Quadrant near the Salt Lake City International Airport.
One of the leases is for land at 1100 South for a port-owned transloading facility aimed at smoothing the movement of imports and exports through Utah while also providing environmental benefits. That project was unveiled in the summer of 2021. The vision is for the facility to take inbound oceangoing containers from West Coast ports that arrive at the Union Pacific intermodal facility in Salt Lake City to be moved to the nearby transloading facility, where the goods inside would be transferred to larger containers for domestic movement.
“The plan right now is to pause all existing activity and effort on that to make sure, again, that we can get some level of a master plan done to ensure that we’re using that as highest and best use,” Hart said.
Hart said the goal is the “highest and best use” of the land in the jurisdictional area. Determining that will be the goal of the master plan process, which will take months and include public comments.
“For those who have felt like they have not had a voice in this process, for those who feel like there should be a better partnership, particularly between Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, I would just say, that’s exactly where we’re trying to get to. That will be the purpose of this master plan, not only to economically optimize the area but also to ensure that we’re getting and listening to feedback from the citizens and also ensuring that we’re tied in with existing infrastructure plans and existing infrastructure planning, whether it’s the county, the city but also the existing master plan.”
Salt Lake City produced a master plan for the Northwest Quadrant in 2016 “that was really good,” Hart said.
The inland port master plan process includes information-collecting this month and issuing a request for proposals in November. A vendor will be selected by year-end, and then a nine-month process will include outreach events and “a lot of public listening,” Hart said.
“But for those who are saying, ‘Well, all of this has been decided,’ let me tell you, that is not the case. This master plan is meant to help us identify highest and best use. And so as we come back to that phrase, we want to do listening, we want to make sure that we’re being responsive, not only economically but environmentally as well.”
UIPA wants to align with the city and county to “ensure a collaborative process” and produce an RFP “that is reflective of what we’re hearing,” he said.
“I think it would be very, very easy and fair for people to accuse us of not listening if we put out an RFP that is not informed by public comment,” Hart said.