The newly dubbed “Plaza at State Street” is the $30 million brainchild of English architect and developer Ben Logue, an affordable-housing expert who spent the 1980s rehabilitating and designing apartments, buildings and theaters in New York’s SoHo and upper east side. Logue’s now-funded vision for Utah’s capital is to gut the vacant single-room-occupancy slums between 235 and 257 S. State Street — maintaining some of the brick façades — while fashioning 180 mostly affordable-housing units and street-level shops inside the historic properties.
Demolition will start in January. The energy-efficient plaza is scheduled for completion 15 months later, a year after another, much bigger downtown face-lift debuts: the $2 billion City Creek Center. Salt Lake Tribune
