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!
Our Capitol Hill
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De LayThe Utah State Legislature is having special meetings to determine all the details for the upcoming move of the State Prison from Draper to west of the Salt Lake Airport. Grab your wallets and your morals and hide! Utah is known for it’s really short normal legislative session (Jan. 26 to March 12) and for two past Attorney General’s currently being prosecuted for a number of naughty things.
The Capitol building is a great/free place to visit and is pretty much open every day from @8 a.m. until 6 p.m. unless it’s a state or major national holiday. The building itself took four years to construct during 1912-1916. It was designed by Richard Kletting in the Neoclassical revival, Corinthian style. Funny though, the state capitol was originally in the smack dab middle of the state in Filmore, Utah. It turns out that Salt Lake City was a much better place to bring leaders together in a town with better food, housing and transportation and in 1856 the Utah Territorial Legislature met and decided to abandon poor little Filmore and move to Salt Lake City. For years legislators met in the Salt Lake City Council Hall and by 1909 we were one of the few states that didn’t have a capitol building to show off to visitors. Then Governor Spry was able to eek out $1 million in bonds from the elected officials but needed plenty more money. Oddly enough, more funds came from death taxes. It appears that when the Union Pacific Railroad Pres. died in 1909, his widow had to pay a 5% inheritance tax to the state of Utah which turned out to be $798,546. That was like a billion dollars back then! Once the money was in hand the land had to be found. The building was almost placed by Ft. Douglas but then put on Capitol Hill. Property owners up there charged the state a fortune to give up their parcels. A giant steam shovel came in, a little train track was built up City Creek Canyon to haul dirt and and another was built to Alta to bring in the granite rock.
If you go up to the Capitol building for a visit (the views of the valley are terrific from up there and it’s only 4 blocks straight up a hill from downtown on State Street), go visit the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum next door (west of it) at 300 North Main. Their hours are Fridays from 9-5 but closed Sundays. It’s a funky little place that stores turn of the century Valentines, hair jewelry and pioneer artifacts.
No smoking!
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De LayIt’s not likely that Utah will see legal/recreational pot use in the near future. However the Utah Legislature did pass a law last year and the Governor signed it to allow a tincture of sorts to be used by people with intractable epileptic disorders and to use CBD oils if certified to do so by their neurologists. So in a nutshell, smoking dope is illegal in Utah.
Interesting questions arise when it comes to rental properties and smoking in general in the property. Landlords and condo HOA/Boards can and do put into leases and CCR’s that ‘no smoking’ is allowed on the premisis, but what about ‘vaping’? Real estate lawyers around the country are trying to keep up with the changing laws and recommend to landlords that ‘the more you spell out in your lease agreement with your tenant the more protected you are’. Just because your lease or HOA says no smoking is allowed, I’ll bet it has no language specifically about marijuana or cannabis.
To make your lease more precise as a landlord, write in that ‘cooking, growing or smoking or vaping any illegal substance is strictly prohibited on the property’. Both tobacco and pot smokers have moved to the new trend of ‘vaping’. Vapor pens look like ‘Tiparillo’ cigars and have cartridges of tobacco or pot (with or without flavorings) to smoke via electric/water generated steam instead of smoke.
Smoke shops in Utah do not have any regulations yet on vaping and what’s in the cartridges except that they can’t sell any form of marijuana-based products. There is currently no quality control over the contents of vapor pens by the FDA/government either. The Pew Research center reported last year that 52% of Americans support legalizing pot but the odds are if Utah citizens were polled they would be much less supportive of legalizing marijuana use. We’ve had several clients of our brokerage sell their homes in Utah to move to Colorado last year just because they simply wanted to live in a state where smoking/using marijuana was legal.
MR. REAL!
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
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!
The Master
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Ever since the 1950’s we’ve been in love with our automobiles. After WWII ended soldiers came back wanting their own cars and auto manufacturers were ready to please. Before then people used to walk in hoards downtown to shop and socialize but that disappeared with the opening of suburban malls in the ‘60’s. Luckily biking, walking and downtown has come back. Now people hang above State Street on 200 South at Bar X, Cedars of Lebanon and Taqueria 27 or mosey down Main Street for yummies from Evas, chops at Lamb’s or breakfast at the Royal Eatery. If you’re one of the folks who have rediscovered strolling downtown then you’ve certainly walked past the corner of glass windows of The Violin and Bow Making School of Peter Paul Prier. There you see beautiful unvarnished instruments being made or hanging on the walls in various stages of creation. Just imagine making a fine instrument yourself-hundreds of hours of designing, carving, sanding, gluing, varnishing, drying wood into a thing of beauty. Peter Prier was one of the world best at making violins, cellos and violas. Sadly our city has lost him, as he passed June 15th at the age of 73.
Peter was born in Germany and began playing the violin at seven years of age. He loved the instrument and entered the Violin Making School in Mittenwald and worked making violins in a shop Stuttgart. In 1960 after graduating from school, he immigrated to the U.S. to work at the Pearce Music Company in SLC and play violin with the Utah Symphony. He had to give both up after enlisting in the military during WWII but came back and picked up his fiddle with the symphony and began caring for the instruments and needs of the string section of his fellow musicians. He opened his own violin shop in Salt Lake City and in 1972 he established the Violin Making School of America and also a Bow Maker’s school. Prier made constructed 160 violins, 17 violas, 29 cellos, 2 basses, and 3 guitars of classical design. Musicians and concert soloists such as Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Silverstein, violinist and conductor, and solo violinist Daniel Heifetz as well as many others play Peter Paul Prier’s instruments.
His sons will carry on the family tradition and we will continue to see intensely focused men and women in the windows of the school making lovely creations. A friend told me once that during their interview for enrollment at the school Peter asked an unusual question: “What did the doorknob look like when you entered the room?” The master luthier was a necessary and proud stickler for details.
Patriotic Utah
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Where’s the most patriotic pack o’ people in Utah? If you didn’t notice last month, Sugar House held the biggest fireworks show in the Salt Lake Valley in Sugar House. BYU’s ‘Stadium of Fire’ is the by far the biggest booms for your buck and always sells out because the show features hours of music beforehand. This year the wrinkled old band Journey was the headliner with washed-up emcee Montel Williams and Disney Channels’ Olivia Holt.
I’m awarding the biggest claim to fame for patriotic celebrations in the entire state to the little town of Willard, which is located just seven miles south of Brigham City. This tiny town of 1772 people (2010 census) claims the oldest continuous 4th of July celebration in Utah that features a baby contest, a melodrama, bingo, a 5K, parade, basketball tournament beginning with a Fireman’s Ball the night before, races and booths that day with picnics and fireworks (although drought fireworks restrictions are in effect). I’m admit it: I love little Willard (aka ‘lil Willy). It was named after Willard Richards, a counselor to Brigham Young in 1859. Decades ago I came home from a long day at work and yelled out to my (now deceased) wife, “Honey, I’m home. Guess what? We have a ski boat now!” Her reply: “We don’t ski.” You see, sometimes we real estate brokers don’t always get paid in cold hard cash. We can accept a myriad of payment types for our services, and in this particular case I accepted a ski boat as payment rather than commission because the sellers were upside down in their home and didn’t have enough equity to pay the brokerage fees. I worked under a broker at that time and had to call her to ask if “we” could accept a commission of a boat. She replied, “I’ll take 10% of the value as my share of the commission.” I got it appraised and handed over my broker $600.
There’s a relevant adage: “The greatest day of your life is when you get a boat. The even better day is when you sell the boat.” Out adventure into boating began and it was terrific for a few summers. Who knew that the Great Salt Lake had a fresh water bay where you could fish, boat and swim? We’d haul the little red speedboat up there on Sundays and tow friends around the lake in inner tubes. If we were lucky enough to get time off on a weekday or Saturday we could make an extra stop at the voluminous Smith & Edwards sporting goods store to see what treasures we could find. Alas, when the season is over the boat has to be properly stored. Our back yard in Sugar House was small and could barely fit the trailer and the boat. Storing it at a professional facility close-by cost $120 per month. We sold it to a couple of wide-eyed happy kids who wanted their own first boat. I still love going up to lil Willy in the Winter to watch the eagles hunt for fish up on the ice and still love shopping at Smith and Edwards.
FREE BUSES & TRAINS
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Random phone call this week: “Hi, Babs, I’m from Kiplinger Magazine in Washington and I’m doing a story on senior citizens.” “Cheesh, I’m not that old,” I said to myself. Long story short, the reporter was investigating where the best cities were to retire to and she wanted to know about Salt Lake City. Here’s what I know and what I told her:
1) If you’re on a fixed and or low income, there’s a huge waiting list to get into any housing. The high-rise senior apartment buildings built decades ago (200 West and 200 East for example) aren’t in great shape and one building last year went the entire summer without air conditioning. My friend Sally said she was told in her search that the wait could be six months to two years and was told that there was a five year waiting list for Section 8 housing (subsidizing private landlords to rent to seniors). You can turn to Utah Housing Authority and several non-profits to find housing but they say, “Prepare to wait.” One national company (Danville Development) has 62+ housing in six Utah cities and runs Calvary Tower by Trolley Square for low income seniors. The first new building, Legacy Village of Sugar House has broken ground next to Wilmington Flats and will offer three kinds of care for independent and assisted living, plus a memory care facility.
2) For seniors who can afford to buy, there are condos priced from $100k-$1 million+ dotted in and around downtown, the Avenues and University areas. Seniors can’t be turned down for loans because of their age or type of income and qualify like anyone else for a home loan. There are no ‘senior only over 55+ only’ condo buildings downtown to purchase, though and I haven’t seen anyone building any either.
3) The active seniors I work with who want to buy condos want to live downtown near a TRAX station, booze, food, shopping, theater and museums unless they want the burbs of Day Break.
If you’re reading this column you’re probably not a doddering old coot like me but your parents or grandparents may be and will need to move in the near future. God forbid your elders might have to move in with you because they can’t find housing!
I can tell you that as we age we think about how we want to spend our senior years and who we want to spend them with. Wouldn’t it be great if a bunch of Burners got together and built an elderly compound where fire pits battles between dub step and music without words was totally chill? One friend of mine cared for an elderly transwoman. They let her wear her wig in her hospital bed even though she presented as a man. Sadly she complained about not having any other LGBTQ people to talk to about the old days of disco, poppers and bare backing in the facility.
SENIOR HOUSING
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Random phone call this week: “Hi, I’m from Kiplinger Magazine in Washington and I’m doing a story on senior citizens.” “Cheesh, I’m not that old,” I said to myself. Long story short, the reporter was investigating where the best cities were to retire to and she wanted to know about Salt Lake City. Here’s what I know and what I told her:
1) If you’re on a fixed and or low income, there’s a huge waiting list to get into any housing. The high-rise senior apartment buildings built decades ago (200 West and 200 East for example) aren’t in great shape and one building last year went the entire summer without air conditioning. My friend Sally said she was told in her search that the wait could be six months to two years and was told that there was a five year waiting list for Section 8 housing (subsidizing private landlords to rent to seniors). You can turn to Utah Housing Authority and several non-profits to find housing but they say, “Prepare to wait.” One national company (Danville Development) has 62+ housing in six Utah cities and runs Calvary Tower by Trolley Square for low income seniors. The first new building, Legacy Village of Sugar House has broken ground next to Wilmington Flats and will offer three kinds of care for independent and assisted living, plus a memory care facility.
2) For seniors who can afford to buy, there are condos priced from $100k-$1 million+ dotted in and around downtown, the Avenues and University areas. Seniors can’t be turned down for loans because of their age or type of income and qualify like anyone else for a home loan. There are no ‘senior only over 55+ only’ condo buildings downtown to purchase, though and I haven’t seen anyone building any either.
3) The active seniors I work with who want to buy condos want to live downtown near a TRAX station, booze, food, shopping, theater and museums unless they want the burbs of Day Break.
If you’re reading this column you’re probably not a doddering old coot like me but your parents or grandparents may be and will need to move in the near future. God forbid your elders might have to move in with you because they can’t find housing!
I can tell you that as we age we think about how we want to spend our senior years and who we want to spend them with. Wouldn’t it be great if a bunch of Burners got together and built an elderly compound where fire pits battles between dub step and music without words was totally chill? One friend of mine cared for an elderly transwoman. They let her wear her wig in her hospital bed even though she presented as a man. Sadly she complained about not having any other LGBTQ people to talk to about the old days of disco, poppers and bare backing in the facility.
TAXI? LYFT?
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Twice a year my wife and I go to San Francisco for business and pleasure. We’ve been doing this for years and so we know a) if we stay in a hotel we have to pay a ton to park a rental car; b) finding a parking space is hell in the city and c) Airbnb’s generally don’t have off street parking for our rental car. One of our friends recommended a service called ‘Homobiles’, which is like Uber for Drag Queens. The cars come via text. Often vehicles come held together with duct tape, but we can be ourselves and the fares are cheap, by donation only.
The sad thing for us about Homobiles is that they don’t have too many drivers and they get booked up very fast. Thus, we often have turned to Uber in the past few years. In San Francisco, Uber has an app that looks like a map, a map covered with 10 black dots within half a mile of wherever we stay. Those black dots on the map are available vehicles ready to pick you up. They appear within three minutes of texting in a fancy schmancy black vehicle, think Caddie (or similar). You don’t need to fumble for cash to pay or tip because it’s a set fee charged to your credit card that you’ve provided when setting up your account. Yes, it’s much more expensive than Homobiles, Lyft or a taxi but the convenience is worth it when there are no other rides available.
I worked in bars in Salt Lake City for years in the late 1970’s and 1980’s. I learned to rely on a certain cab company in Salt Lake to haul away the forlorn, intoxicated, the party girls and boys. That company has become so unreliable in the past few years that I turned to a friend who worked for Uber and lives across the street from me. We went to Portland for Memorial Day weekend and needed a ride to the airport. Here’s our texts: Me: “Need a ride to the airport at 2.” Him: “Sorry, I have a day job now. Can’t help. But there will be plenty of drivers around to take you. Getting picked up from the airport could be a challenge. Uber and Lyft have stopped doing airport pickups in SLC. Lyft has stopped drop offs as well. A few commercially licensed Uber drivers are doing pickups but they can’t keep up with the demand. The taxis are no longer required to use meters so many are gouging passengers.”
Have you noticed a difference in ride service options? Gov. Herbert signed a bill March 31, 2015 that put in massive statewide regulations for ride hailing companies. The big one is that the State requires drivers to be covered with at least $1 million in liability insurance. Uber and Lyft didn’t fight that requirement but they have been fighting the Salt Lake Mayor’s office for the even stricter rules imposed prior to that bill getting signed.
Hair Museum!
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
Salt Lake City proper doesn’t have many museums but the few we do have are pretty great. There’s the fabulous Natural History Museum by Red Butte Garden at the University of Utah, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the LDS Church History Museum (closed for updating). You may have been to most of those swell buildings and seen the collections and displays, but I’ll bet you a buck you’ve never been to the Pioneer HAIR Museum. I’m the only person that calls the Pioneer Memorial Museum at 300 N. Main Street by that name. I came up with it long ago when I lived across the street from the place and took friends and family over to visit fairly regularly. It’s free and it’s funky.
Way back in 1901 in the capitol city a group of 46 women were invited to the house of Annie Taylor Hyde (daughter of LDS Church President John Taylor). You can imagine the gathering of ladies who probably looked much like the distaff cast of Downton Abbey, with long skirts that brushed the floor (often with trains), shirtwaists and high collars. They met and formed a new group called the Daughters of Utah Pioneers (“DUP”). All of them were descendants of Utah pioneer stock and their goal was “to perpetuate the names and achievements of the men, women and children who were the pioneers in founding this commonwealth by preserving old landmarks, marking historical places, collecting artifacts and histories, establish a library of historical matter and securing manuscripts, photographs, maps and all such data as shall aid in perfecting a record of the Utah pioneers.” They collected so much stuff they built a museum next door to the Capitol which opened in 1950.
Back to the hair. The Museum is free and open Monday-Saturday 9 am to 5 pm and on Wednesday nights until 8 pm. When you walk into the building your nostrils will take in that musty dusty smell you probably get when you have to go to your grandmother’s house to help fetch her something out of her two year supply. For those of you who have an even better developed nose you’ll detect another layer of scent that you probably won’t identify until you’re reading one of the display cards next to a lovely dried flower arrangement under glass. Yes, those flowers are made of good ol’ pioneer hair. You see, in the old days a woman couldn’t run to Smiths and pick up a bouquet to brighten her home. There weren’t flower shops until electricity and refrigeration were more common. Women who were handy with needlework learned to weave their own hair, the hair of their husbands and kids and the hair of the departed into flowers. It was an ancient tradition to keep mementos and the hair of the dead. The designs are crazy good and intricate and smell like, well, old hair.
Check it out next time you’re walking around the capitol lawns. They’ve got an original ZCMI chandelier, fantastic old Valentines cards and love letters, and newspapers made not from paper but from rags when the Deseret News ran out of paper and had to use old shirts, pants and dresses to print the news on until supplies arrived.
Hooker’s in SLC?
/in Living Here: Urban Utah Blog /by Babs De Lay2015
We live in the ‘red dirt’ district of downtown SLC. Before paved roads, there was packed red dirt on 200 South on the west side by the Gateway. When men went down to visit the shady ladies of the whore houses in this area of Greek Town, they’d get the red dirt in the cuffs of their pants. If they were married men, their wives would know exactly where they had been and there would be big trouble.
Sex workers have been in this state since the first brothels were established down by Camp Floyd, a short-lived U.S. Army post near Fairfield, Utah (@ 40 miles southwest of SLC). Women have followed military troops throughout centuries all over the world and Utah isn’t without sin. There was a state statute written in 1876 that prohibited the ‘keep of, residing in, or resorting to houses of ill-fame for the purpose of prostitution or lewdness.’ That didn’t stop men from wanting sex or women selling it.
– The first hooker anyone knew about in the state was Ada Carroll. She was brought to Utah by W.W. Drummond, as associate justice of the Supreme Court of Utah as his paid concubine. He had been married with children but left his family in favor of this shady lady;
– In 1886 the Deseret News reported that “There are now in the city some six brothels, forty tap rooms, a number of gambling houses, pool tables and other disreputable concerns all run by non-Mormons”.
– In 1897 the JUNIOR Brigham Young resigned from the Brigham Young Trust Co. because it was discovered that property owned by the firm was being used as brothel on Commercial Street. However, church controlled real estate in the city leased to houses of prostitution up until @1941 when the First Presidency ordered such leases stopped.
-Salt Lake City officials recruited Ogden’s most famous madam, Belle London to open up and run prostitutes in the Red Dirt District. She had up to 100 women working in cribs for about four years before she was run out of town and the building ripped down.
Over a hundred years later, Salt Lake City is redoing one of the most famous naughty streets here into a swell place for art, brews and food to open in conjunction with the new Eccles Theater opening downtown in the spring of 2016. Regent Street is between State and Main Street between 100 and 200 South behind the Broadway show venue. It was originally known as “Commercial” and there were cribs (think the size of a modern day work cubicle) rented out nightly to the soiled doves who would sit at the top of the stairs and coo down at prospective clients to come on up for some fun.