Salt Lake City’s oddball “Sears Lake” is finally being treated like what it is: a construction-site headache with a dirty past. Crews are cleaning up the former Sears parcel as Intermountain Health moves toward a high-rise hospital that could replace the muddy, bird-friendly placeholder downtown has been staring at for years.
The latest update from The Salt Lake Tribune says cleanup is underway along the pond’s edges, while final plans for the hospital are expected later this year. The site sits between State and Main streets near downtown, where demolition and a high water table turned an empty excavation into the unofficial Sears Lake.
The Dirt Has A Fuel-Station Footnote
The block’s environmental story is tied to more than just rain and groundwater. A publicly available Phase I environmental review listed the former Sears property in leaking underground storage-tank records and identified the location as a former auto dealership with underground tanks.
That record does not, by itself, establish the full scope of today’s cleanup or indicate a current threat to nearby residents. It does help explain why the next chapter for the site starts with soil work before it starts with steel.
Intermountain’s Hospital Plan Is Still Coming Into Focus
The former Sears store operated from 1947 until 2018, and the building was later demolished, according to the Salt Lake City Council. In 2024, the council approved rezoning and a development agreement to support an urban hospital, including requirements for active ground-floor uses, walkways and at least one acre of open green space.
Earlier concepts described by KSL included a vertical hospital campus, roughly 1,750 parking stalls, landscaped space and a food-truck plaza. Those ideas provide a rough outline, but the final design remains under wraps until later this year.
The lake itself was never part of the plan. FOX 13 previously documented how the empty lot’s high water table created a temporary pond that became a resting place for birds and a minor local celebrity.
Now that accidental wetland is giving way to the less glamorous work of redevelopment: testing, hauling, and managing what is buried below. Until the hospital plans arrive, the biggest sign of progress at the Sears site may be the disappearance of Sears Lake itself.
