A 1950 gym in Salt Lake City's Liberty Wells neighborhood is days from opening as housing. Innovation Park at Liberty Wells puts 30 apartments inside the former Liberty Wells Center and adds 36 townhomes on the adjoining ball fields, 66 homes at 707 S. 400 East.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated the 2.23-acre site outright, and the rent math starts there. Ivory Innovations and Call To Action Philanthropies assembled the project with backing from FJ Management, according to a Nov. 15 report in The Salt Lake Tribune. About a third of the townhomes were already leased, and rental applications were open.
Three Floors Inside the Old Gym
The conversion kept the building and changed what it holds. Three floors of apartments now sit inside the gym: three two-bedroom units and 27 one-bedroom units, compared with the subsidized student studios planned for Ivory University House on the University of Utah campus. Shared space includes a fitness room, bike storage and a garden. The townhomes occupy the ground the ball fields used to hold.
Building Salt Lake, covering the 2024 approval, described the proposal as a missing-middle project. The built version is that idea in brick: a reused gym and a row of townhomes, not a single new apartment block.
A tour of the center took place Nov. 9. The building had been photographed in 2023, before the conversion. Three years after the housing project was announced, the public date is a grand opening at 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 19. Elder John A. McCune, Mayor Erin Mendenhall, Crystal Call Maggelet and Clark Ivory are scheduled to speak.
Leasing is ahead of the speeches on the townhome side. About a third of those 36 homes were leased as of Sunday. That figure covers townhomes, not the apartments in the gym. Applications from prospective renters were open.
What the Land Gift Does to the Rent
Clark Ivory has said the church's land contribution was a leading factor in the project's affordability. A site given outright does not have to earn back a purchase price in the monthly rent. Along a Wasatch Front where land values are rising, that missing line item is the whole point of the gift.
The paperwork is not identical on every church site in this story. The Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation opened Ivory University House in 2023 where a Latter-day Saint chapel had stood, under a 99-year ground lease with the church. That project is planned to eventually include 600 or more subsidized student studios and scholastic support. Church land in both cases. At the university, a lease and students. At Liberty Wells, a deed, and apartments alongside two- and three-bedroom townhomes.
Apartment rents here are aimed at residents earning 60% of the average regional wage. Subsidized townhomes are reserved for households earning 80% of that wage or less. About one-quarter of the townhomes are at market rates. About 40 units, the Tribune reported, are within financial reach of residents with relatively modest incomes by Salt Lake County standards. The gym apartments are described as affordable. The market-rate share sits in the townhome count.
The 2024 plan was drawn in area median income, a different label from this month's wage bands. Building Salt Lake listed 28 units at 80%, 14 at 60%, seven at 50%, and 17 at market rates: 49 income-restricted homes and 17 at market on that approval-era sheet. A plan from the approval year is not this month's lease description. Both accounts include market-rate homes. The project was not presented as 66 units at the deepest subsidy.
A 2022 Donation, Then a Conditioned Yes
Building Salt Lake reported that the church donated the former center in 2022 to a nonprofit offshoot of Ivory Homes. The planning vote came later. On March 27, 2024, the Salt Lake City Planning Commission approved the planned development and the preliminary subdivision plat with conditions, according to the commission's summary of actions.
That was a conditional approval of those two items, the development plan and the preliminary plat. By this month the sequence had produced a building people could tour and townhomes with signed leases. Three years separate the announcement from the Nov. 19 opening, on the Tribune's framing. From the 2022 gift, the span is closer to four years.
There is another Ivory Homes project on former Latter-day Saint open space, about 3.1 acres at the north end of F Street and 13th Avenue in the Avenues. Liberty Wells is smaller and more specific. The donated piece is 2.23 acres, the 1950 gym stays in the plan, and the playfields become townhomes.
The commission record is the city action a reader can check. What November adds is the condition of the site itself: apartments stacked into the old gym, a third of the townhomes leased, and an opening set for Thursday at 1:30 p.m.
God's Backyard, With the Zoning Left In
The Tribune places the project in a national pattern of religious groups putting portions of their land into affordable housing. The shorthand is YIGBY, a church-property cousin of yes-in-my-backyard politics, often written as Yes in God's Back Yard. The usual candidates are parking lots, empty fields and aging buildings. This one was a recreation center.
Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, said faith-based efforts have been growing along the Wasatch Front as land values rise, and that YIGBY projects still face zoning and financial challenges. The land-value point is why a donated acre changes the rent. The zoning-and-money point is why a donated acre is not yet a building.
Mount Tabor Lutheran Church is at the earlier step. It is exploring options for affordable homes on its property near 700 East and 200 South, a central-city parcel rather than a ball-field conversion on 400 East.
CNN reported in October that nine states had passed or considered legislation to make housing on religious property easier, and that congregations were looking at unused lots, empty fields and aging buildings. The completed projects in that account took time. Housing on Emory United Methodist Church land in Washington, D.C., opened in 2019 with 99 fully affordable units, after 11 years. Securing approval added millions of dollars and at least two years. In Houston, Trinity East United Methodist Church broke ground in July on a 90-unit complex for residents 55 and older, expected to open the following year.
Liberty Wells, from a 2022 donation to a November 2026 opening, is the short version of that timeline. It still ran through a conditioned planning vote and a financing stack that includes FJ Management. Tibbitts's two obstacles, zoning and money, are the ones Mount Tabor and the next congregation actually have to clear.
Seven Projects, and a Thursday Opening
Housing for Impact launched in 2023 as a joint venture of the Ivory and Maggelet families. The Tribune describes seven affordable developments across the Wasatch Front, set to produce up to 850 rent-subsidized apartments and townhomes, with projects in South Jordan, Draper, Magna, Lehi, Francis and Park City. The effort could yield up to $1 billion in housing investments and thousands of affordable dwellings across Utah. Those are reach figures, stated as potential.
Call To Innovations lists other Innovation Park communities. Holbrook Farms is a 239-unit mix of townhomes and back-to-back units. Francis Commons is 16 townhomes and 12 apartments, smaller than Liberty Wells and built from the same two ingredients, townhomes plus apartments. Francis also shows up on the Housing for Impact city list.
Crystal Call Maggelet and Clark Ivory are both on Thursday's program. Housing for Impact is the Ivory and Maggelet families' wider venture. FJ Management is the backer named for Liberty Wells itself. Elder John A. McCune and Mayor Erin Mendenhall are scheduled with them, at 1:30 p.m.
Applications are open now. About a third of the townhomes were leased as of Nov. 15. Thursday's scheduled opening puts those speakers at 707 S. 400 East, in front of a gym that dates to 1950 and now holds three floors of apartments, with townhomes where the ball fields were.
