Salt Lake City’s old Sizzler lot is staying quiet for a while longer. In a surprise vote on Tuesday, the City Council unanimously rejected a request to rezone a 0.82-acre parcel at 2111 S. 1300 East that would have cleared the way for a seven-floor boutique hotel on the northwest edge of Sugar House Park. Council members said they were wary of pushing the business district closer to the park and of how a much taller building might change the park’s character and mountain views, so the site remains in its current lower-intensity zoning for now.
Councilmember Pushes Back On Upzone
Councilmember Sarah Young, who represents Sugar House, led the motion to deny the rezone and warned that signing off on it could set a risky precedent for nearby blocks. Young said her vote reflected “concern about precedent” and that bumping the parcel to MU-8 while the city’s new mixed-use zoning is still settling in “feels premature,” as reported by Building Salt Lake. That coverage also includes a project rendering credited to Magnus Hotel Management and FFKR Architects.
What The Rezone Would Have Allowed
The developers had asked the city to change the site’s zoning from MU-3, which generally limits building heights to about 35-40 feet and does not permit hotels, to MU-8, which allows buildings roughly 75-90 feet tall and explicitly permits hotel uses. A Salt Lake City Council report lays out those contrasts and notes that the parcel abuts the northwest corner of Sugar House Park and measures about 0.82 acres, meaning a taller building would sit immediately next to parkland.
Neighbors And Planning Commission History
The proposal made it through the Planning Commission last fall, but not quietly. Neighbors packed public hearings to voice concerns about traffic, parking, groundwater, and blocked mountain views. The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the commission still forwarded the measure to the council on a 7-1 vote, and council members repeatedly pointed back to that earlier testimony during Tuesday’s deliberations. The clash has kept the line between neighborhood preservation and denser development around Sugar House Park as a continuing flashpoint.
Developer’s Pitch And Community Benefits
Project backers, represented by John Potter of Magnus Commercial Properties, tried to sweeten the deal with a package of community benefits aimed at offsetting the hotel’s impact. The list included below-market retail space for local businesses, interest-free tenant-improvement financing, free community meeting space, a proposed GREENbike station in the park and public access to paid underground parking. Those proposed offsets and other project details are outlined in the Salt Lake City Council report.
What Comes Next
With the council’s rejection, the site stays zoned MU-3 and the developer would need to revise the concept or come back with a fresh zoning request. Rezoning would have been only the first step toward a buildout, not a guarantee of construction. Local reporting says the team had been eyeing roughly 145 rooms, a rooftop restaurant and an underground parking structure, according to coverage by KSL. For now, neighbors and council members say they want to watch how the updated mixed-use zoning performs in the existing business core before expanding it into parcels that sit directly next to Sugar House Park.
