Salt Lake City officials have picked the artist team behind a seven-piece public art installation planned for Sugar House, a project that will scatter sculptures of joggers, kite-flyers and strolling families across Fairmont Park and the nearby McClelland Street corridor. The work, called The People in Your Neighborhood, depicts familiar community figures and everyday moments meant to capture life in the neighborhood.
City officials announced the selection last Thursday, choosing local husband-and-wife team Tomato Tomahto for the commission, according to KSL.com. The duo, made up of architect and sculptor Jeremy Morgan and muralist and illustrator Brooke Smart, was selected from 26 local artists who applied for the commission and advanced to the final round with two other applicants. Arts officials said the pair was chosen for their playful, community-centered proposal, strong storytelling and cohesive experience across both sites.
Morgan and Smart, who formed Tomato Tomahto in 2019, bring degrees from the University of Utah, SCI-Arc and Brigham Young University to a body of work that already includes installations at the Eccles Theater, The Gateway, The Grand America Hotel and the Maven District in Salt Lake City, as well as Canyons Village in Park City, according to the artist team's own project history.
Seven Pieces, Two Sites, One Continuous Walk
The installation splits into two art pieces planned for Fairmont Park and five pieces along McClelland Street, part of a joint venture between the Salt Lake City Arts Council and the city's public lands and transportation departments. The Salt Lake City Arts Council has said the work is intentionally distributed throughout the corridor, inviting visitors to explore, discover, and move between the two sites as part of one continuous artistic journey. One Fairmont Park piece will reportedly include an interactive sculpture with three rotating pillars painted with local symbols, letting visitors spin and mix combinations inspired by the surrealist exquisite corpse game.
The scenes described for the broader installation include joggers running alongside nature and wildlife, a group flying kites at the park, and young families strolling through Sugar House. McClelland Street itself carries its own layered history: the corridor follows an 1880 canal system originally built to haul granite for the Salt Lake Temple, and its two-block stretch between 2100 South and Sugarmont Avenue was converted into a pedestrian-focused shared street using $500,000 in city capital improvement funds approved in 2019, per the Salt Lake City Transportation Division.
Art Funding Tied to a Bigger Park Overhaul
The public art commission draws on Salt Lake City's Percent for Art program, a policy first established in 1984 and updated in January 2021 to set aside 1.5% of eligible project funds for public art, according to the Salt Lake City Arts Council. The city's collection now includes more than 130 permanent municipal artworks under that mandate. For Fairmont Park specifically, the Salt Lake City Public Lands Department has earmarked up to $140,000 in Percent-for-Art funds, part of a larger design allocation that also includes $5 million from a general obligation bond for north end beautification, $1.5 million for parkwide safety enhancements, and $754,000 in Capital Improvement Program funds for a full-court basketball upgrade.
The latest bond tranche set aside $441,000 for public art commissions at various parks. That bond is the same $85 million Parks, Trails & Open Space General Obligation Bond that Salt Lake City voters approved in November 2022 with 71% support, authorizing funding drawdowns across eight primary public lands projects citywide, according to the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office.
Fairmont Park's Broader Redesign Won't Start Until 2027
The art installation is tied to a larger overhaul of Fairmont Park, the 27-acre Sugar House green space at 1040 E. Sugarmont Drive that has hosted an off-leash dog park, skate park, community fishing pond and the county-operated Fairmont Aquatic Center since the park's founding in the 1930s. The Salt Lake City Public Lands Department finalized its master plan for the park after a year-long process with landscape architecture firm CIVITAS, drawing on feedback from more than 720 residents gathered through community open houses and surveys.
Per the final design, the renovation plan prioritizes connection, safety, sustainability, and play for all ages. It calls for additional pickleball courts, more defined spaces for soccer and volleyball, improvements to play areas and the dog park, enhancements to the southern end of the McClelland Trail, and upgrades to natural features throughout the park. Construction on the park's first phase is expected to begin in 2027, meaning the two Fairmont Park art pieces will likely trail behind their five McClelland Street counterparts, which could be installed sooner depending on the park's construction timeline. The full installation is expected to be complete by the end of 2028.
A Neighborhood Already in Transition
The art project lands in a stretch of Sugar House already reshaping itself. Ground broke in a $53 million senior housing project directly across from Fairmont Park in May, a 110-unit affordable development on city-donated land named for longtime resident Erma Rosenhan, as per Hoodline. That construction has arrived alongside broader frustration among Sugar House merchants, who have pushed back against a new business assessment fee amid years of nearby roadwork, and it follows another recent city effort to weave public art into multi-modal infrastructure along the 400 South viaduct.
