MR. REAL!
2015
As a doddering older person born in the USA in upstate New York in the last century, I did not, and was not ever around this game called soccer/football. I never even saw a soccer ball until I traveled with my family south of the border after we moved to Arizona. My dad was a serious baseball and football fan and also a scratch golfer, and a soon to be bull fight patron. Soccer never entered our paradigm. I only now know about soccer when Ross my intern comes in wearing his REAL sweat suit jacket and he’s in a happy place because his REAL won. Honestly, I’ve tried to be a fan and forced myself to watch games on the TV box. Alas, it’s just not my game.
However, I am a fan of REAL owner Dell Loy Hansen. I met this smiley guy a few years back and assumed he was just your average looking Zions Bank manager or a Church official, or maybe a professor of animal husbandry at his alma mater, Utah State. I didn’t know what he did for a living, just that he was into making Salt Lake City a better place. That got my attention. Low and behold, slap my head and call me stupid, Dell Loy not only is the main REAL owner, but the CEO of the Wasatch Group.
Never heard of his other company? They/he owns huge interest’s downtown, in the Wells Fargo high rise, the historic/retro/restored Ken Garff Building and Questar’s Corporate Center. They own almost 17,000 apartments in five states, too. When Dell Loy’s group bought the shares in the Wells Fargo Building on Main Street he also brought life on the street back to that particular block. He convinced KUTV to move downtown to the ‘sidewalk’ of his little purchase so they could have a Today Show visual format. If you’ve tuned into Channel 2 News you know that anyone can walk up behind the talking heads at 6 and 10 PM and wave at the cameras. He also took an old bank building on 300 South and turned it into one of the finest broadcast studios in the Western US. He bought out most of the assets of Simmons Media and acquired U92, X96, Rewind 100.7, EAGLE 101.5, Mix 107.9 radio stations. He already owned ESPN 700 (the old KALL radio station) and got SLC to approve an electronic billboard over the stations headquarters.
Dell Loy was unable to convince the Utah State Legislature and Salt Lake City that we could use another soccer stadium for his minor league team, the “Monarchs”, out at the State Fairgrounds this past session. He’s still hunting for build options. To dispel rumors, he and the Wasatch Group just purchased 2.3 acres on the southwest corner of 600 So. State for $5.82 million to build ‘mid-priced housing for the city’s regular workforce’…not a stadium. GOOOOOAAAAAAAL for housing!