Attendees at the recent “Trends” real estate conference in Salt Lake City listen to a discussion about how art, culture and technology can boost a place’s attractiveness and enhance its economy. The event was hosted by ULI (Urban Land Institute) Utah. (Brice Wallace/Salt Lake Business Journal)
State officials often brag about the elements that keep Utah’s economy humming. A vibrant and plentiful workforce. Business-friendly regulations. An entrepreneurial and innovative mindset.
But an often-overlooked component is what people do away from the workplace.
A recent panel discussion in Salt Lake City concentrated on how art and other creative work has the potential to attract and retain newcomers needed for the growing Utah economy.
That creativity, combined with technology and culture, can be harnessed to make places where people want to live, work and connect, helping a community grow. More than just a place for fun, creative locations also can generate personal connections, innovation and creativity, speakers said.
Real estate developers can partner with artists to “build a city that people want to be in and build a city that people want to get out of their homes in,” Laura Hurtado, executive director of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, said during the recent “Trends” real estate conference hosted by ULI (Urban Land Institute) Utah. Arts also “can increase residential value and can build the kinds of cities you want to live in,” she said.
Hurtado acknowledged the difficulties in measuring a financial return on a park or mural or museum. “Those are the things that elevate life, and they’re hard to gauge but hugely impactful,” she said, adding that they are more of a life experience and about vibrancy, can be sites of collaboration and participation, and “where people want to be and be actively a part of.”
“‘Creative communities,’ a ‘creative economy’ is kind of a new buzzword of an old concept,” said panel moderator Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission. But Utah’s creative economy nonetheless had $15 billion direct spending and supported 70,000 jobs in Utah in 2022. “It’s not a small industry,” she said.
Arts and culture are often what causes a person to become emotionally attached to a place, according to Dana Ware, chief creative officer at ARound, which develops technology-based experiences.
“This place is growing,” she said. “Whether we want it to or not, it’s growing. People are coming and they’re expecting some of these types of attractions. They want to be able to see: ‘What does Utah’s culture look like?’ … And when they come, we should be facilitating that for them. They shouldn’t have to go hunt it down.”
Arts need to be a central part of real estate redevelopment, Hurtado said. “When we invest in artists, when we let artists do what they do best, our real estate thrives, our communities thrive, and they can be places where people want to be.”
Ware said the needed elements are developers, a location, an artist’s vision and then technology. Together, they can build a site and infrastructure that will facilitate interactions among people, benefiting a place, an economy and a mindset, panelists said.
“Creativity … bleeds into everything,” Pearce said. “Creativity is not just a tool for artists. It’s a tool for businesspeople. It’s a tool for entrepreneurs. It leads to innovation, and you never know what’s going to come out of that.”
Those places can be “anchors” to create a comprehensive experience that feels and builds the fiber of a vibrant, thriving city where people want to be, Hurtado said.
And it doesn’t have to be in a big city. Pearce noted that Green River hosted the shooting of a Marvel movie last summer. Over four days, the production company spent $3 million, took up every hotel room, used local people for the crew, and brought a sense of pride and participation that locals will remember. Helper has capitalized on its downtown and “vintage, cool feel of the city” to land several film projects and to build a thriving, destination arts community, she added. “It doesn’t take a lot to create that great a feel,” she said.
“I think ancillary cities outside of the big urban cores that we know are also having a moment because I think that people are realizing that you can live anywhere,” Pearce said. “You could do your job anywhere. … We’re growing. We want to grow in the right ways. I think arts and culture can really help that.”
The time is right for developers and artists to team up, panelists said. People who were stuck in their homes during the COVID pandemic now want to go to amusement parks, enjoy the arts and see other attractions as a way to connect with other people and connect with places. And downtown Salt Lake City is poised for “serious growth and serious reimagining of downtown” with a new entertainment district.
“I look at Utah and I think there are so many opportunities for us to be the state that shows people what you can do with innovation, arts and partnerships with developers,” Ware told the crowd. “Like, we really can become that state because there’s so much development happening, there are tons of artists, and you have a huge tech hub here as well. We have all of those partners sitting here in this room and we have that opportunity to try to figure out how to become the model for the rest of the world for what that can look like.”
At another gathering, the Utah Life Sciences Summit, Jefferson Moss, executive director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, said quality of life is among the reasons for Utah’s great economy. He said that companies considering Utah as a location for operations have employees that “really care” that the state has mountains, outdoor recreation, entertainment and the arts. “All of those,” he said, “are so critical to the success of Utah.”