| Updated: 11:11 p.m.
Sacrificing Main Street’s run-down Utah Theater for a residential skyscraper project is supposed to bring other benefits to Salt Lake City.
As part of a controversial pact to “sell” the vacant 102-year-old relic to co-developers Hines and The LaSalle Group for zero dollars, city leaders who agonized over giving up on fixing the building sought guarantees in return: affordable homes in the resulting tower, a midblock walkway cutting west off Main and a new pocket park in a part of downtown where public open space is scarce.
Another big condition for the city’s land discount was perhaps the hardest to fulfill: Create a digital repository to fully capture the crumbling grande dame of Utah’s performing arts past for future generations before she gets demolished.