When we were in Salt Lake City, we stayed at the evo Hotel, which advertised itself as a new kind of gathering place for our community….a laid-back hotel with a rooftop bar. When we first checked in, I thought, This is so cool; we are sooo with it. The hotel shares what were formally five brick warehouses, with a climbing gym – that was free to hotel guests – and two evo stores that offer roughly the same kind of clothes and equipment as REI.

The hotel is about 35 minutes from the lifts at Part City and is designed as a place to stay during the ski season without being an actual resort. We were there during slack season, so the hotel was pretty empty, and it would probably feel different if it was full of skiers. The basic philosophy seems to be having smaller rooms with more public space, like the room above, overlooking one of several climbing walls and the “rooftop bar” that overlooks the street. Our room was small and didn’t have a window, a desk, or reliable WiFi. That would have been OK – not ideal, but OK – except that the public desks did not have reliable WiFi either.

The hotel is in a rundown warehouse area that was rapidly gentrifying. Very rapidly.

Not having good WiFi – good being defined as reliable – is worse in an empty hotel with rooms without windows. The empty part was a problem with the Natural History Museum and The City Library. The enormous Lobby of the Natural History Museum, which, according to Ennead, was inspired by Utah’s distinctive slot canyons, a dramatic central public space…organizes the visitor experience….and uplifts and inspires. The problem was that the space was empty. That’s great in a slot canyon but, even in a very busy building, gives a feeling of disuse and neglect (a little like looking into an empty conference room in a busy hotel).

The Library’s Lobby and Plaza, which, according to Safdie Architects, is an “urban room,” a public space open through the waking hours, [which] attracts every facet of Salt Lake City’s community, was also virtually empty except for a couple of homeless people (from now on called “unhoused” people). It gave the place a slightly creepy feeling. I want to point out that the Safdie website shows both of these area being well used and they probably are on a warm Sunday afternoon.

These empty spaces alone with Salt Lake City’s extra wide streets and new construction, don’t so much give the impression of abandonment as the party quite hasn’t started yet.