This is supposed to be a bland, quiet, lily-white, monocultural Mormon city. So what was going on with the Young People’s Peace Vigil at the Utah state capitol?
A teenager named Afshin Ahmadian called for an end to the city’s gang violence. Derrick Yee, mayor of the citywide student government, pleaded for racial harmony. There was entertainment, too: Indian dance, African dance, Native American dance, a “multicultural dance” by a group called Reflections of Diversity, even a sexy merengue dance that nearly peeled the polish off a nearby statue of Mormon prophet Brigham Young.
That’s right: gang violence, diversity and sexy dancing.
In Salt Lake City.
“People don’t realize that things like this go on in Salt Lake,” said Veronica Tagaloa, a Samoan high school senior who came to the recent vigil to watch her cousin’s Polynesian singing group. “The stereotypes are all wrong.”
It has been 150 years since Young arrived in this valley and announced to his fellow pioneers that “this is the place,” but the image of Salt Lake City as an antiquated cow town persists to this day. In reality, though, it has become much more of a modern Western boomtown, one of America’s fastest growing and fastest changing cities. In recent years, it feels like everyone — Pacific islanders, Latinos, high-tech firms, Californians, even the International Olympic Committee — is deciding that this is the place.
The 19th Century stereotypes really are outdated. The economy is humming, with unemployment only 3 percent, and construction is so frenetic that locals joke about changing the state bird to the crane. The day of the peace vigil, the independent-movie crowd was making its annual trek to the area for the renowned Sundance Film Festival, and Salt Lake City Weekly’s lead story was “Gay on the Job: Coming Out in the Utah Workplace.” Utah has finally relaxed its stone-age liquor laws. Upscale restaurants are opening all over Salt Lake City. And lest anyone forget, Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart is coming here next fall to lead the Utah Symphony.
But with the modern era comes modern ills. Salt Lake City already has a higher crime rate than New York City, and while most of it is property crime, not every city has had a Tongan-Samoan gang war. Like the rest of the West, the Salt Lake City area is learning that explosive growth can be a mixed blessing, bringing smog, massive sprawl and unbearable traffic as well as prosperity. The question is whether it will become another sprawling megalopolis like Phoenix or Las Vegas, or whether it will try to follow the example of Portland or Seattle, cities that have at least tried to slow their development.
“For years, planning was a dirty word in conservative Utah, but not any more,” says Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corridini, a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights Democrat. “Now we know we need to manage our growth. We don’t have any choice.”
The Wasatch Front, stretching from Ogden to Salt Lake City to Provo, is one of the most scenic stretches of America, framed by snow-glazed mountains that seem to range beyond the horizon. But it is also on its way to becoming one of the most crowded stretches of America, a far cry from the barren desert one of Young’s wives called “the most desolate in all the world.” More than three-fourths of Utah’s residents now live in this 80-mile corridor.
The area has become a mecca for white-collar industries like software and biotech, rated the nation’s best place to do business by Entrepreneur magazine. A $1.7 billion project is under way to expand the Front’s main highway from six lanes to 10 — an effort that has spawned an epidemic of auto-pedestrian collisions as cars take alternative routes to avoid construction delays — and 75 new hotels are expected here before the 2002 Winter Olympics.
The problem is that the Wasatch Front’s population is expected to balloon from 1.6 million today to 2.7 million in 2020, to a staggering 5 million by 2050, a recent study concluded. The average commute would double, 66,000 acres of farmland would be paved over, and Utah’s per-pupil public school spending, already the nation’s lowest, would plunge even further, according to the study.
So now there are thoughts about applying the brakes, at least gently. Salt Lake City is launching a $300 million light rail project with federal funds, and there are plans for commuter rail along the Wasatch corridor. Even Utah’s conservative legislature authorized $350,000 for a growth management study.
“I lived through this once, and we did it all wrong,” says Ruben Ortega, the former Phoenix police chief who now has the same job in Salt Lake City. “In Phoenix, we had economic growth, population growth, diversity growth, and we let everything get out of control. This time, we’re ready to do it right.”
Ortega is not talking only about reducing the brownish smog that now hangs over this picturesque city. Homicides doubled in Phoenix at the peak of its growth spurt, and Ortega is determined not to let that happen here. His force has expanded by a third since 1992, and an aggressive community policing effort has been launched to combat gangs. Pioneer Park, until recently known colloquially as Needle Park, was reclaimed by a series of undercover stings. And after five years of steady increases, crime dropped in Salt Lake last year.
The other major challenge is “diversity growth,” as the minority population has grown from less than 48,000 in 1980, to 104,000 in 1994, about one sixth the county’s population. The Mormon church has attracted thousands of Latino converts, as well as one of the nation’s largest Polynesian communities. The numbers of blacks and Asians are still small, but they are growing as well, and the Salt Lake City school district is expected to be 40 percent minority by 2004. There have been tensions, with minorities often blamed for escalating crime rates and whites often accused of racial hostility.
Still, there are signs of progress. Salt Lake City’s slogan for its sesquicentennial last year was “150 Years of Diversity,” and one of its main thoroughfares was recently renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. Edward Lewis, a Salt Lake City businessman who leads the Idaho-Nevada-Utah NAACP, says integration has been a process of two steps forward, one step back.
“I told the chamber of commerce folks they were as white as snowflakes, and you know what they said? `You’re right. What can we do?’ ” said Lewis, who now heads the chamber’s multiethnic committee. “There’s racism here, like there’s racism anywhere, but people here really want to bridge the gap.”
As the city has strayed from its roots — it is 45 percent Mormon, compared with 70 percent for all of Utah — there have been cultural clashes. In 1996, when a student started a gay and lesbian club at a Salt Lake high school, the school board reacted by banning all extracurricular activities. Recently the City Council passed — then hastily repealed — a measure outlawing antigay discrimination, a controversy sure to resurface at election time.
In any case, the church is doing fine.
Its worldwide membership is above 10 million, and its multispired granite temple is still the main attraction in Salt Lake.
It is also a big player in the construction frenzy, building a 21,000-seat assembly hall on one side of Temple Square and a huge office tower on the other.
“We don’t mind the changes here; we’re excited about them,” said church spokesman Don LeFevre. “This is still a great city for families.”
He has a point. There may be an alternative club called DV8 across from the convention center, and tourist brochures claiming “our nightlife doesn’t consist of root beer and clog dancing,” but Salt Lake City is still fairly tame.
There may be a reggae club next door to DV8, with Mexican, Chinese, Polynesian and Japanese restaurants out back, but this is still a mostly white city. And for all its development, it is still a strikingly scenic city.
The question is: Will it stay that way?
