Salt Lake City’s rental-heavy East Central neighborhood could be in for a shakeup, with developers pitching a 15-story condo tower a block from Trolley Square that would add 97 for-sale units to the area. In a building boom dominated by rentals, the project would be one of the few for-sale condominium towers in the city and, if approved, would set a new height precedent east of 700 East. The timing is no coincidence, landing just as the city updates its Central Community master plan, a process that could help determine whether the tower actually gets built.
Developer 705 East 500 South LLC has filed a master-plan amendment for what it is calling “Trolley House Residences,” a 15-story mixed-use building with 97 condos stacked above roughly 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, according to Building Salt Lake. Renderings by WATG show a masonry podium with brick and sandstone arches at street level and a glass tower above. The proposal would top out near 182 feet, including elevator and stair overruns. Project documents also call for about 138 parking stalls, two levels of below-grade parking, and fewer bike parking spaces than the city ordinance currently requires.
How zoning and incentives factor in
The developers are asking the City Council to change the Central Community future land use designation for the site from medium density to high density and to rezone the parcel from MU-5 to MU-11, a move that will be considered alongside the broader Central Community plan update, according to the Planning Division. The Salt Lake City Planning Division notes that small-area planning work and individual land-use applications will move forward at the same time rather than one after the other. Salt Lake City’s mixed-use zoning includes incentive provisions that can grant bonus stories when projects include income-restricted units, and the MU-11 district in particular allows multiple-story bonuses under those rules, per the city code summary.
Neighborhood context and next steps
The 0.48-acre site sits less than a block south of an existing TRAX stop on the vacant lot where the Phillips Church once stood. Project materials point to nearby proposals called Station 424 and Trolley North that would bring additional housing to the block, per Building Salt Lake. Because the application seeks both a master-plan amendment and a rezoning, it must pass through planning review and ultimately win a City Council vote, with public notices and hearings built into that process as shown on the city’s public-notice postings. If the council signs off, the Trolley House tower would stand out as a rare for-sale option along a stretch of Central City development that has leaned heavily toward rentals in recent years.
