A 16-story office tower at 250 E. 200 S. in downtown Salt Lake City is for sale, with no asking price listed. The listing could mark the end of Seattle-based Unico Properties’ Utah holdings: 250 Tower is described as the only Utah property remaining in its portfolio.
Sources differ on the tower’s size and available space. Building Salt Lake reports that the 1984 building has 374,772 square feet and 108,638 square feet of vacant space across contiguous full floors. CommercialCafe describes Tower 250 as a 354,342-square-foot Class A building with 140,376 square feet available. Unico has reduced its Utah holdings in recent years: it previously owned the Boston Building, sold the data center building across the street to Dart Interests in 2023, and sold City Centre to the University of Utah that year.
The University of Utah's Deep Roots in the Building
The University of Utah has anchored 250 Tower since 2017 and now occupies 38% of the building's leased space, per Building Salt Lake's reporting. Unico reportedly signed the university as a tenant while originally buying the tower, and the U. renewed its lease in 2022, reducing its footprint and staggering its lease expirations at the time. Other tenants — Forvis Mazars, Reaveley Engineers and Stride Bank — have renewed or signed leases in the building since 2021, and the remaining leases across the tower run an average of 4.6 years.
The university's return-to-office posture has become part of the sales pitch. CBRE brokers marketing the building told Building Salt Lake that the University of Utah's three-day-a-week return-to-office mandate, which they said took effect in August, is already driving new demand for space. That timeline differs from the university's own announcement, posted on @theU, which states that selected staff will transition to a minimum of three days a week in the office by January 1, 2027, with supervisors retaining discretion over schedules and some remote or hybrid arrangements, and with the policy not applying to faculty scheduling.
A Tight Downtown Office Market
CBRE brokers Phil Brierley, Cole Macadaeg and Charley Will are marketing the vacant floors as an opportunity to add space in a downtown market they characterize as supply-constrained. As reported by Building Salt Lake, the brokers say no other downtown block larger than 50,000 square feet is available, no office building has been delivered downtown since 2022, none is under construction and no new supply is expected within five years. They also put average occupancy in competing buildings at 83.5%.
At the ULI Utah trends conference on October 20, Brierley said large contiguous blocks in top-tier buildings were already scarce and predicted that tenants renewing or relocating within existing space would increase demand for the next tier of buildings. Building Salt Lake also reported CBRE figures showing overall office vacancy at 21.8%, prime vacancy near downtown at 6.5% and Class B vacancy at 27.3% in the third quarter. The brokers said Class A leasing from 2021 through 2025 was more than 1.4 times the 2018-2019 average, with eight quarters of positive absorption, and that central business district Class A asking rents reached a record $40.08 per square foot, up 10.9% year over year.
Conflicting Snapshots of the Broader Market
The reports describe different market snapshots and use differently defined areas. Newmark’s Greater Salt Lake report recorded negative net absorption of 136,561 square feet in the third quarter, while year-to-date absorption remained positive at 355,668 square feet and direct vacancy fell to 15.2%, according to Newmark. By contrast, CBRE’s figure cited by Building Salt Lake was 161,000 square feet of positive absorption for the Salt Lake City-Provo market in the quarter, its eighth straight quarter of growth. Newmark also recorded 1.28 million square feet of third-quarter leasing, the highest quarterly total since 2018, and year-to-date leasing of 2.95 million square feet, already above the 15-year annual average with a quarter remaining. Newmark’s direct asking rents were $27.14 per square foot, essentially flat with year-end 2025, compared with CBRE’s record downtown Class A figure.
A Nearby Deal Offers a Point of Comparison
The University of Utah's history with Unico-owned buildings offers one possible reference point for how a 250 Tower sale might unfold, though the evidence does not establish what price or outcome this listing will bring. Back in 2024, the Utah Board of Higher Education approved the university's plan to acquire the 238,805-square-foot City Centre office building and adjacent acreage for what was called an opportunistic price of $38 million, according to KSL.com. That building, built in 1986, was reported to be about 52% vacant at the time, and university chief real estate officer John Creer said the previous owner had purchased it several years earlier for about $75 million. CBRE brokers marketing 250 Tower separately told Building Salt Lake that a buyer could acquire the tower at a stabilized all-in cost more than 70% below what it would take to build a comparable tower today.
250 Tower itself carries a mix of amenities from a 2017 renovation, including a fitness and yoga center, an auditorium conference center and a second-floor outdoor terrace, according to Building Salt Lake. Parking includes a five-story garage with 461 stalls plus 31 surface stalls, working out to 1.31 spaces per 1,000 square feet of building area — though CommercialCafe's listing puts total parking at 708 spaces, a figure that doesn't square with Building Salt Lake's count. CBRE markets the property as a Class A, LEED Gold building that could serve a large tenant seeking space in the city's urban core, pointing to the rebuilt 200 South corridor, which created a bus rapid transit line connecting the tower to the university's main campus and, brokers say, has improved access to the site.
How the listing fits into downtown’s changing landscape
The cited examples do not establish a conversion plan for 250 Tower. Building Salt Lake reported in August 2023 that construction was commencing on a separate office-to-residential project at 348 E. South Temple. In another distinct downtown transaction, @theU reported that the University of Utah Board of Trustees approved a $38 million purchase of City Centre at 200 East and 400 South at a June 11 meeting. That was a university acquisition, not a landlord listing like 250 Tower.
On transit, the Utah Transit Authority’s Schedules and Maps page lists Route 2 as “200 South.” That confirms the route designation, but does not establish when service began or whether transit has driven leasing demand, as CBRE brokers say.
