Millcreek’s inaugural City Center Master Plan is a transformative vision for the district between Highland Drive to 1300 East and 3300 South to Elgin Avenue. It imagines the approximately 100-acre area as a lively, vibrant, walkable, and identifiable City Center that is inspired by the City’s values and unique setting in the Salt Lake Valley. Building upon the recently adopted general plan, the Master Plan reflects the City’s active “Connected by Nature” theme.

Creating the Plan involved extensive public engagement. MHTN Architects + VODA Landscape Architecture and Planning and Millcreek City Staff hosted two walking tours of other successful nearby city centers: one in Salt Lake City’s Sugar House neighborhood, and another in Holladay’s recently revitalized downtown. On both tours, the facilitators led residents through popular and lively parts of each neighborhood demonstrating different urban design and placemaking strategies at work. In addition, three public open houses drew in residents and small business owners to provide feedback and comments on various iterations of the Plan.

The Plan follows several key guiding principles. First, the design of Millcreek’s City Center should represent the City in ways that are distinct from other cities. Second, the City Center should emphasize walkability and minimize internal traffic and parking demand. Third, the City Center should include municipal property owned by the City and designated for public use. Fourth, the City Center should emphasize culture, art, ideas, and interaction between citizens.

Three distinct districts make up the City Center. The City Marketplace, encompassing the area mostly to the south of 3300 South and partially to the east of Highland, is a significant gateway into the City Center and an active shopping zone. The plan envisions improved urban design in the form of infill development, buildings with smaller footprints, decreased setbacks, hidden parking, and increased pedestrian pathways between stores. The central district is the Millcreek Center, the Plan’s main focal point and home to the expansive Mill Park. Mill Park is a multifaceted open space full that includes bucolic lawns for quiet, reflective uses like walking and conversing. Other placemaking elements include activity zones for splash pads, bouldering, tot lots, sand pits, and playground equipment; a civic zone for community uses such as farmers markets, concerts, and other large-scale outdoor events; and a prominent transit stop with a large monument sign providing visitors a sense of arrival. The third district comprising the area from Elgin Ave to Miller Ave is the Neighborhood District, which intends to transition gradually between the scale of the City Center to the existing single-family homes nearby.

Overall, the Plan emphasizes urban design, placemaking, and connectivity to improve the pedestrian and bicycle experience. People-oriented laneways, a woonerf, and a one-way couplet street are unique elements to the plan and serve to make the City Center more walkable. The introduction of boulevards, bike lanes, and on-street parking consider multimodal access to the Center. Connections to regional trails are also integral to the plan to ensure active transportation access to the Center. Recommendations for existing road right-of-way rebalancing is provided within the plan to establish complete streets at the City Center to enhance access by people walking, biking and riding public transportation.

To ensure the Plan is implementable, economic development strategies as well as phasing and implementation recommendations are provided. Strategies to assist the City in working with developers on achieving a cohesive City Center are provided. Additional elements of the plan included to assist in implementation include urban design guidelines, landscape recommendations, building form guidelines to support a form-based code approach, and transportation recommendations.

On November 9th, the new Carolyn and Kem Gardner Commons celebrated its dedication as the University of Utah’s premiere example of interdisciplinary undergraduate academics.  MHTN Architects’ design addresses the U of U’s goal of a holistic academic environment that builds student community, by strategic proximities and detailed settings that invite students in a relaxed and collegial student environment.

At five stories tall, the long building sits composed in balance. Its lifted façade anchors and engages the Piazza-Navona-scaled Marriott Library Plaza.  Highly transparent, and tall, levels 1&2 invite students from all directions, and establish a cadence of outdoor seating areas, elevated around Tanner Fountain.

The new building replaces and upgrades the legacy function of its predecessor, Orson Spencer Hall, as the primary classroom resource to the undergraduate campus. It performs at PAC 12 norms, and is used by some 20,000 students each year, and by over 60 different departments that schedule classes here. The building incorporates 37 classrooms, collaborative space, research space, and 177 faculty offices.

As a central hub for daily undergraduate life, Gardner Commons is the new home for College of Social & Behavioral Sciences, 15 departments and Institutes, including the Hinckley Institute of Politics, as well as a consolidated center for Advising, a prominently located University Welcome Center, and 150-seat Café/Study zone on the main level with 4 food venues, and integrated study lounge seating.

On upper levels, intentional placement of research programs, faculty departments, specialty labs, and social resources, sit directly across from classrooms where required classes are scheduled. Undergrads deciding on a major are able to see into programs and resources they may not otherwise consider during the first critical years at college.

With the repetitive rigor of lab procedure, three simple clerestory incisions inject light into the center spine of the building. The experience of each clerestory, more a nod to the behavioral sciences, becomes a sculptural point of confluence, encouraging social interaction on the top levels of the building. Play of sunlight and shadow naturally draws people to places to sit, study, or meet others between class, programs, and workspace destinations.

Gardner Commons is the first building at the University of Utah to use Ground Source Wells as its heating and cooling energy source. They provide 96% of the heating loads (or 100% heating hours), 60% of the cooling load (or 90% cooling hours). The System savings over typical campus systems is $70,000 annual energy savings. This approach is removes 378 metric tons of CO2 Eq from campus, and makes the building carbon-neutral-ready.

MHTN’s design of this building is innovative and influential in assisting the University to rewrite campus standards, spending less dollars per square foot than its predecessors, while bringing long term value.

Learn more on YouTube watch Gardner Commons at the University of Utah