Stacking Up

There's been lots of community association news in Utah over the past several weeks, and not a lot of time to write about it.  The Utah appellate courts have handed down several cases dealing directly with community associations and homeowners, and several other cases with tangential, but significant impacts on the industry.  I'll blog about those in the next several days.

The other news deals, rather surprisingly, with progress in various community association projects.  First, a new project in the Sugarhouse area is opening soon; the controversial Urbana on Eleventh "condominium tower" will have 29 "pet-friendly" units.  Neighbors fear parking and crime issues, but many local businesses are hoping for increased commerce.  Units will range from slightly under 200k and up to slightly over 500k.

Meanwhile, progress on the City Creek project is continuing, with a good portion of the food court having its grand opening today.  That event gave rise to some new publicity and a status update on all of the buildings, nicely shown on this diagram.  Units in the Richards Court condominiums will commence in just a few months, with units in the taller Regent and City Creek Tower 1 project being available in mid-2011.  (Interestingly, the developer has little available information on the "Tower 1;" the provided link is to a skyscraper page.  That page is worth a look, since it has some photographic history of the construction, and nerdy photos, rendering and videos.

And lastly, the City Creek Project has gotten some more publicity from the New York Times, which has an interesting outsiders take on the church/state and economic issues associated with the development.  One interesting tidbit in the NY Times article notes that although the church will likely allow alcohol in some of the development, they will sell the underlying property to accommodate that while "keep[ing] the church from being in the liquor business or from benefiting from liquor sales."   (Regular readers of this blog will recall that the New York Times has written on the City Creek project in the past.