Help save Great Salt Lake wetlands & prevent environmental injustice - stop Salt Lake City from turning Northpoint into a warehouse district
The issue:
Warehouse developers eager for profits are racing to turn undeveloped land in Salt Lake City’s Northpoint community (east and slightly north of the airport) into another sea of polluting warehouses, similar to the inland port warehouse development occurring west of the airport.
What’s happening right now:
Warehouse developer Scannell Properties, (according to their website “a privately owned, international commercial real estate development firm specializing in build-to-suit and speculative projects for the industrial, office, and multifamily markets.”) owns property that was upzoned to: “Business Park'' in the early 2000’s during Mayor Anderson’s administration.
This zoning allows for warehouses and Scannell has started building an 800 thousand and million square foot warehouse, destroying quality of life for the residents of the Northpoint Community and wildlife habitat.
We should not further degrade our air quality with polluting warehouse development, when dust from the drying Great Salt Lake is increasingly threatening to human health. Take a look at what’s happening now in front of people's houses in these recent photos:
This area, containing 60 homes, is adjacent to some of the highest functioning wetlands on Great Salt Lake. The last thing we should be doing at a time when the Great Salt Lake is facing ecological collapse is destroying wildlife habitat which may be the last refuge for hundreds of bird species.
What YOU can do to help stop another warehouse district in Salt Lake City:
Ask Mayor Mendenhll and the City Council to address the mistake made during the Anderson administration.
The city has produced a draft master plan which has NOT yet been adopted by the City Council, and in response to community concerns Mayor Mendenhall and her staff are trying to improve it.
We need to let the City Council know we do NOT support another warehouse district.
There are significant problems with the draft master plan that need to be addressed before a master plan is adopted:
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Before the draft Northpoint Small Area Master Plan is adopted we need a commitment from Salt Lake City that they will take a step back and develop a comprehensive plan for lands adjacent to Great Salt Lake wetlands. Residents, as well as community and conservation organizations have developed a proposal for the “Shoreline Heritage Area Preservation Plan” to develop a comprehensive plan for preserving this irreplaceable and critical resource.
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Salt Lake City needs to push the pause button, with a 180 day moratorium on requests from developers to upzone so they can build warehouses.The city needs to comprehensively examine the market for warehouse development, and the public health consequences of that development. The Utah Inland Port jurisdictional area already allows for 152 million square feet of new warehouse development. Is it in the public interest to enable even MORE warehouse development? Is dedicating over 22% or more of the land within our city to warehouse development while we are facing the acute impact of the climate emergency and the dying Great Salt Lake in the public interest?
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Salt Lake City needs to conduct a robust independent analysis of the public subsidies for this warehouse development. Inland port warehouse developers were very clear that their development would only be profitable to them with significant public subsidies for infrastructure (primarily roads, sewers and power). As it turns out this warehouse development is not beneficial to our community, why should our city repeat this mistake in the Northpoint area?