With downtown transformation coming, SLC’s urban core is already steadily drawing more visitors​on July 5, 2025 at 12:00 pm

Downtown Salt Lake City’s near-term destiny as an even bigger visitor economy than it is today is pulling more sharply into focus.

​Downtown Salt Lake City is abuzz with activity as it faces transformational development.  

Downtown Salt Lake City’s near-term destiny as an even bigger visitor economy than it is today is pulling more sharply into focus.

Some of the latest snapshots of activity from Utah’s urban core show a healthy rebound in several metrics hit hard by the pandemic, thanks partly to more people flowing to a growing set of cultural attractions downtown.

Higher visitor spending, an expanding bar and restaurant scene, a wide array of arts and sporting events and big leaps in residential population are all evident — just as the downtown heads into an era of multi-billion dollar investment in shiny new developments on track to transform the urban core.

“We’re seeing momentum build across every economic sector,” Dee Brewer, executive director of the Salt Lake Chamber’s Downtown Alliance, said in a statement. The trends, he said, signal “what locals and visitors already feel: Downtown Salt Lake City is alive with energy, ideas, and opportunity.”

That boosterish view is borne out by recent data from Brewer’s organization that shows an upswell in audiences for the arts on city streets and in visitors to all kinds to events in the 40-block area comprising Utah’s downtown “living room.”

New numbers also emerge as some of the first inklings of a historic spate of downtown revitalization that is getting underway.

Downtown ‘on the rise’ – with visitors

Between full-time residents, workers and visitors, downtown saw the equivalent of 20.9 million “customer days” last year — instances where someone spent more than 90 minutes in its midst. Nearly 60% of those were spent by non-residents coming downtown.

The downtown population itself has grown by thousands in a few years, making for a 27.5% jump in 2024 to about 10,000 people and putting it on a trajectory to rise another 28% in the next five years.

Numbers indicate a 10.5% lift in office workers returning to downtown as well, as more employers tilt away from work-from-home in favor of in-person and hybrid schedules. That, in turn, has contributed to more daytime retail activity and improved office leasing.

Visitors, though, led that wave of customer days to the core, with several key effects. Four million tickets were sold last year for downtown shows and events, an 18.4% jump from 2023. That spike pushed ticket sales volume for the state’s urban center to just below its all-time annual record for the downtown area, set in 2018.

Total traveler and leisure spending in Salt Lake County reached $6.2 billion last year.

And the top three dozen days for downtown visitation last year coincided with conventions, sports and other events at the Delta Center and shows at Abravanel Hall, the Capitol Theater, Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center and The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theater.

Alongside that roster, downtown organizers behind a program called The Blocks Arts District have been on a multi-year push to boost the appeal, variety and pedestrian accessibility of cultural and arts offerings downtown, from weekend displays by street musicians and artists to a host of concerts and festivals.

More on offer, more of the year

Salt Lake City and the Downtown Alliance announced in May they will partner to build a permanent multipurpose building in Pioneer Park to serve as a year-round home for the popular Downtown Farmers Market.

The new public market structure at the park’s north end is expected to improve public safety and access to green spaces for that growing neighborhood, along with the goal of increasing activity and putting more eyes on the street beyond Saturdays during the market’s usual harvest season.

In June, the city relaunched the seasonal Open Streets program, which cordons off segments of Main Street between South Temple and 400 South and adjoining blocks for pedestrian-only access on Friday and Saturday evenings. That strategy, carried forward from the time of pandemic lockdowns, has opened sidewalk space and helped bring more patrons to the core’s nearly 220 bars and restaurants and 200-plus retailers.

On Tuesday, organizers behind The Blocks Arts District fleshed out the results of several years of bringing additional cultural events, art installations, exhibits and family-friendly activities to the core — namely, reaching a total downtown audience of more than 4 million people last year as they wandered its sidewalks.

The district, according to program director Britney Helmers, “is the cultural heartbeat of downtown.”

“This past year,” Helmers told the City Council, “we’ve transformed the streets into stages, multiple walls into canvases and public spaces into gather grounds for all Utahns.”

‘More permanency’ as downtown transforms

The Block Arts District program hired more than 90 local artists spread over those platforms last year, with events held on at least 148 days — up from 117 days a year earlier. That, in turn, brought in at least a million additional event or performance attendees across arts and cultural venues, Helmers said.

Council member Eva López Chávez, whose District 4 spans the urban core, said the program has grown as residents and visitors take advantage of its free and accessible events. “It is a way that the city can really anchor permanency and activation on block facades that might need some support,” she told colleagues.

“Right now,” said Chávez, “we have a downtown that is in the middle of transformation, so having the continuity of The Blocks is really critical to activate spaces that otherwise wouldn’t normally be accessible or activated during our summer.”

The latest take on visitors also provide a kind of “before” picture for downtown as it nears to the edge of an unprecedented infusion of investment, anchored by a $4 billion sports, arts, culture and convention district around the Delta Center.

Initial work by Smith Entertainment Group launched in April to transform the downtown arena into a dual-sport, “state-of-the-art” venue for Utah’s new hockey club, the Utah Mammoth, as well as the Utah Jazz. The district is also to include several high-rise hotels and a new 450-stall parking structure.

That work will be closely tied with sweeping renovation and expansion of the adjacent Salt Palace Convention Center, estimated to cost $1.8 billion.

And in what will ultimately bring millions more visitors to Salt Lake City, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will complete its epochal renovation of Temple Square in 2027 — followed by a six-month open house.

It’s estimated that display by the worldwide faith could bring between 3 million and 5 million visitors streaming through to Utah’s capital to see the church’s newly polished crown jewels.