I promise this is the last column about high rises here for a while. As an avid bird watcher, I know what a danger skyscrapers are to our avian friends due to reflections and lights at night. Most folks don’t realize that Utah is in multiple migratory bird flyways, including the Pacific and Central Flyways, which are crucial to so many species of birds that fly to and from our state each spring and fall.

Birds stop in Utah to rest up and refuel on their journeys north to Canada and south to Mexico, Central and South America each year, many stopping in and around such water sources as Gunnison reservoir, Utah Lake, the freshwater arm of the Great Salt Lake and Bear Lake. There are tens of thousands of them that pass through our state like avocets, stilts, curlews, phalaropes, sandpipers but also finches, waxwings, sparrows, juncos, hummingbirds, crows, raptors, etc. Sadly, it is estimated that up to a billion birds die every year from them flying into buildings and skyscrapers at full speed of 20-30 MPH because they see a reflection of trees or greenery that looks safe, or reflections of clouds that appear harmless in the day or are attracted by light.  In 2023 a Eurasian Eagle Owl escaped from the Central Park Zoo and became the darling of New Yorkers who looked to the skies to see ‘Flaco’ land on window sills, rooflines and decks around the city.  For a year he was dubbed the ‘Manhattan Mascot’ by his fans until he crashed earlier this year into a glass-wrapped building and died.

Luckily there are two international trends that are helping to save our bird friends, but I’m not sure any of these good intentions and changes to building materials are being pushed for here in Utah. Citizens in other areas around the world have gotten some cities to recognize this threat to birdlife and have gotten cities like Chicago. Over 1000 birds died in one night in Chicago, flying into the McCormick Center that had been all lit up.   We can help by turning off building lights at night, as that’s when most birds migrate. Developers and owners of buildings downtown love to light up their structures at night and some even add color themes-all of which change bird behavior and cause bird deaths. In Dallas, Houston and Forth Worth they have turned off more than half of the building lights downtown each night, saving thousands of birds from a violent crashing death and saving electricity.  Also, there’s a new glass material for high rises being used around the world that has patterns in it that you can’t see from the street, but the birds do and thus they avoid flying into the buildings that have this kind of glass.  It’s about time our major cities in our state start reviewing codes and permits for high rise construction and advocate for our birdlife here.

In a month we’ll learn who the new president of the United States will be, unless…?  I don’t want to go down that road of conspiracy theories but wanted to add some facts to the age old question, “Do president elections effect the housing market?”

According to the data keepers at the National Assn. of REALTORS, when it’s an election year for the CEO of the country, sales in November go down 9.4% VS in years where there isn’t an election sales go down by 9.8%.  Newsweek magazine interviewed chief investment officer at mortgage lender New American Funding who said “There is certainly a human element to housing prices and mortgage rates. As a result, election years can bring more volatility to prices and rates than in non-elections years. However, those moments of volatility are fleeting.”

Both candidates are promising to cut inflation, increase the housing supply, and cutting interest rates. We’ve just had a major half point reduction two weeks ago by the FED, which is saving buyers a bit on mortgage interest and credit card rates. People forget that a year ago rates were at 8% for an average home loan and now they are hovering in the low 6% area. No one can cut inflation pressures quickly but increasing affordable housing will help what he calls a “frozen, mostly unaffordable market.”

The market will respond to how we all vote in November because if we as individual voters like the outcome we’ll go out and buy things, like cars, houses, furniture, appliances (big ticket items). There is no evidence though that presidential elections have a huge impact on home prices. According to CoreLogic who has collected data since 1988, prices rose an average of 4.5% during the fall of non-election years compared to 4.4% in years with a presidential election.

I don’t care WHO you vote for, as long as you do vote and participate in our democratic process. In Utah, you can register at vote.org/register-to-vote/utah on line if your information is received by 5 PM 11 days before election day. It’s the same deadline for registering in person, but if you’re registering by mail, you must make sure your registration is received by that same time 11 days before an election. You can also register on election day. To register in Utah you must be a citizen of the U.S., have resided for 30 days before the election and live in the precinct in which you are registering to vote, be 18 years old by election day, not be convicted of certain felonies, treason or have been found to be mentally competent by a court of law.

For information on ALL Utah candidates, go to the League of Women Voters of Utah website: www.lwvutah.org. They offer non-partisan data on all those running for office in this year’s election in November. I won’t see you at the polls because I trust my mail-in ballot and the post office!

We’ve had unseasonally warm fall weather, but cold is coming. Imagine if you lost your job, had a major medical episode, no health insurance, couldn’t make your rent for a few months and ended up on the streets here. Where would you go seek shelter? During the Great Depression in the early 1930’s, Utah’s unemployment rate was 36%-the fourth highest in the nation-and we had homeless tent cities (aka ‘Hoovervilles’) just like we find in the state today. Utah’s ‘point in time count’ found about 3,700 individuals experiencing homelessness during one night in January here last year.

The state has several shelters offering different services and include:

-the Rescue Mission: emergency services and recovery programs. One can stay there for three to four months while staff works to help you get secure employment, save money and get into housing (Salt Lake location 463 S. 400 West, Ogden location: 2775 Wall Avenue)

-Volunteers of America: This non-profit runs several centers, including The Geraldine E. King Women’s Resource Center for women 18 years or older at 131 E. 700 South, SLC) with shelter for up to 200 women and the Youth Resource Center for individuals age 15-22 (888 S. 400 West, SLC).

-the Road Home oversees the Pamela Atkinson Resource Center for men (3380 S. 1000 West, SLC), The Gail Miller Resource Center (242 W. Paramount Ave., SLC), and the Connie Crosby Family Resource Center, aka the Midvale Family Resource Center (529 W. 9^th Ave., Midvale).

-Catholic Community Services provides daytime refuge for those who are unsheltered and a warm place in the winter to stay out of the cold during the day at the Weigand Resource Center at 437 W. 200 South in SLC.

-Lantern House (269 W. 33^rd St., Ogden) is the largest shelter in Northern Utah offering shelter for men, women and families of all sizes and pets are welcome. Iron County’s Care and Share Emergency Shelter program houses around 400 individuals and families per year suffering from housing instability (244 W. 900 N., Cedar City). Moab doesn’t have a general homeless shelter but has a domestic emergency shelter for female and adolescent survivors and a few non-profits who can assist in finding emergency shelter.

-Switchpoint Community Resource Center in St. George (948 N. 1300 West) is Southern Utah’s go-to shelter. They also are in charge of the 50 micro homes/shelters for the winter that just opened up at 548 S. 700 West in SLC, the second year in a row for this program that was fund this year by our legislature.

You can call the Homeless Connections Hotline at 801-999-9999 for bed availability at shelters in the state.

If you’re not suffering from lack of housing, consider donating to any of these programs this winter either yourself with money, foodstuffs and clothes or volunteering your time. Or do a food/clothing drive at your office, neighborhood or condo complex. Most of these groups always need donations and many have foodbanks connected to the general community.

September 11^th, 2001 seems like a lifetime ago. That date, burned into many of our brains was when the twin towers fell in NYC and killed almost 3,000 people. At the time of the terrorist attack, the World Trade Center’s twin towers were the tallest buildings in NYC-1,369 and 1,362 feet tall, respectively.  They were later replaced by One World Trade Center at 1,776 feet tall which is the tallest building in the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere. Why mention this? Salt Lake City is undergoing a massive push by some to create even taller buildings in the capitol city, mostly touted as a necessary improvement to our zoning rules by the Smith Entertainment Group who are attempting to redesign and build in an integral part of downtown.

Currently the residential/business project known now as Astra Tower on the corner of State Street and 200 South is hovering over pedestrians at 450 feet and 40-stories tall,  but the Salt Lake City Council unanimously approved a zoning change last week that increases the maximum building height in the Smith Entertainment Group sports and entertainment district in and around the Delta Center from a current 125 feet to 600 feet. There was one caveat tho, “Any structure that is 200 feet or taller will need to go through a design review by the Planning and Zoning Commission”. It’s my opinion that our P and Z Commission is made up of pretty tough volunteer planners who have proven in the past to have foresight as to how our city should grow and I’m glad they will be involved in design review. As a planner myself for eight years with the city we worked for over a year, every month, with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to get the entire City Creek project off the ground, including not just the teardown of Crossroads Mall but the build of the retail mall on two sides of Main Street and the condo/apartment buildings surrounding it in their new project. There were a ton of variances required and rules changed to get certain aspects of the project to fruition.

You may have strong opinions about high rises filling up Salt Lake’s downtown. Depending on if you’re pro-development or anti-growth you probably had strong feelings about the Hines Group tearing down the historic Utah Theater at 150 South Main Street to build an apartment tower. Now the developer is putting a pause on the project and wants to fill in the gap on the street with a parking lot until they actually launch their project and bring in the construction crews. They got a sweet deal from the RDA-‘buying’ the property from Salt Lake City for zero bucks in exchange for building new housing with plans for public amenities in and around the building but have postponed plans now for two years with what they allege are the high costs of construction.

Unless you’re a Native American, we’re all immigrants to this state. We were discovered by trappers and explorers, some of whom stuck around, followed by the great Mormon trek of folks who sought a place to live and practice their religion. Once the white colonizers from Britian and Scandinavia took over the land industry began popping up, including gold, silver and copper mines followed by the railroads in the late 1800’s. The blue collar labor jobs of digging ore, working in mills or laying tracks fell to immigrants from China, Japan, Greece, Korea, Crete, Croatia and Serbia. Labor agents in foreign countries worked with local business leaders to bring in thousands of workers to Utah.

By 1910 there were over 2,000 Japanese living in and around 100 South, between 200 West and 300 West. The Issei (first generation) of immigrants who moved here were both skilled and non-skilled laborers, mostly men who later brought wives to the capitol city once they decided to make Utah their permanent homes. Soon after their arrival they built a Japanese school, the Japanese Church of Christ and the Salt Lake City Buddhist Temple, a studio for Obon dance and kendo lessons, markets and noodle shops in what became known as Japantown or Japantown Street.

By the time WWII began and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, 11,000 Japanese-American citizens were relocated form San Francisco and the West to the infamous internment camp at Topaz, outside of Delta, Utah. This ended up tripling the number of Japanese citizens in our state of which many stayed here, since their homes and businesses had been confiscated and sold off by the U.S. government during the war. Japantown was a wonderful gathering place for social and religious events as well as a source for Asian-centric foods.  Over the years people moved away from downtown and spread out into the community, and when plans were announced to build the Salt Palace in 1969 Japantown was mostly gone except for the two churches on the block.

In 2007 the SLC City Council approved an honorary name change for the street, declaring it officially “Japantown Street”. I was a volunteer member of the Planning and Zoning Commission and fought to keep at least some of the area preserved despite the Salt Palace expansion. We got a small victory with a lovely Japanese garden on the north side of 100 South, and the two churches are still intact.

Now big money is hovering over Japantown, Abravanel Hall, the Delta Center and the Salt Palace to re-imagine and create a sports and entertainment district in the area. The last remnants of this vibrant community and history could be in jeopardy of disappearing, to go by the wayside like ‘Greektown’, which only has a TRAX station named after it left for the world to know another ethic group lived side by side Japantown, downtown.