University of Utah west-side campus: School gets $2M to clean up contaminated Rio Grande site

As it sits now, the future site of the first west-side campus for the University of Utah doesn’t look like much.

The 1.89 acres in Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande District is currently surrounded by thick wire fencing and even thicker weeds. All that’s inside the lot is a cement foundation, the remnant of a rotation of industrial businesses that operated there long ago — including a soap factory and a poultry plant in the early 1900s.

Those past enterprises also left their mark in the dirt. You can’t readily see it, but the ground is saturated with arsenic and other dangerous contaminants.

“The target area has been blighted for decades,” according to a university report on the empty lot.

It’s going to take a lot of work to transform it into the special expansion of classrooms the U. envisions.

Last week, though, the state’s flagship school announced its first steps to clean up the space that will mark the latest addition to Salt Lake City’s plans to dramatically reform this part of the west-side — from its industrial past and dilapidated presence today into what it’s calling the “innovation hub” of tomorrow.

Standing in the shadow of the historic Rio Grande Depot — the former train station and the area’s namesake — university officials celebrated receiving a $2 million Brownfields Cleanup Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to start remediating the land and clearing toxins to make way for the future campus.

The U. originally purchased the lot in 2021 from a private owner, paying $6.8 million to nab the spot just west of Pioneer Park that stretches from 550 West to 570 West along 400 South, which is also referred to as University Boulevard.

The idea was that even at 3 miles away from the U.’s main campus on the foothills of Salt Lake City, the satellite would be connected by the Utah Transit Authority’s TRAX line that runs along University Boulevard and up to the school.

As it was first presented, the university was supposed to be the anchor of the city’s Rio Grande re-envisioning, a plan rooted in education and expanding opportunities with a focus on health science — the U.’s speciality.

By 2024, though, there were doubts as to whether the U. would continue forward with its role. Salt Lake City redevelopment officials said then that the school had “gone a different direction” due to leadership changes.

Now the project is back online, with Mike Brehm, the U.’s associate director of environmental management and code compliance, leading the effort.

“It’s sort of an unusual process for an institution like a university,” Brehm said, noting the many departments at the school that have worked together to make it happen, from real estate to campus planning to environmental researchers.

The U. has started on some of the work already to clean the site, which has to be done before any construction starts. Overall, it will cost $3.5 million to do the work, with the U. contributing $1.5 million in addition to the EPA grant.

The hope is that, maybe 10 years from now, it will look much different.

The city’s plans and challenges

Right now, most of the blocks in the Rio Grande District look like the U.’s site, with graffiti and piles of trash and rubble. In addition to a largely abandoned industrial and railroad-marked history, the area has also long been associated with the capital city and state’s struggle to address the growing homeless population.

Even after the shelter that was previously in the district — The Road Home — was demolished in January 2020, many in the homeless community have remained in the area, which is close to critical services.

At the U.’s announcement Thursday, about 20 folks who are unhoused milled around, carrying tents and pushing carts.

The city started taking action on its plans to update the area once the shelter was removed, struggling before that to get buy-in from investors. Challenges persist.

The west-side area that Salt Lake City wants to revitalize is about 20 acres total, with 11 owned by the city and covering about two blocks, said Cara Lindsley, deputy director of the city’s Community Reinvestment Agency. There is hope for art installations, housing and offices, and a festival street along 300 South.

Already, the namesake depot is under construction, with workers there pounding away during the news conference Thursday.

“We’ve been working for several years in this neighborhood,” Lindsley said Thursday. She called the district a “major gateway to our city,” sitting next to UTA’s intermodal hub for trains and buses.

“Projects like this don’t happen overnight,” she added.

Salt Lake City, Lindsley said, has already secured USA Climbing as its anchor for the area, with the organization set to construct an elite gym at the corner of 500 West and 300 South. Even that, though, came with controversy when another local gym complained about the choice.

And now the land’s contaminants mean more complications. It’s expensive — often prohibitively — to remove toxins like those that have been in the dirt for decades.

The university, for instance, had agreed with its EPA grant to remediate the ground to business-level standards. That includes soil removal, as well as chemical treatments to render the existing contaminants less harmful. The school will also treat the groundwater.

But cleaning the land for housing, which the city wants to include in the project, requires stricter standards. And most of the companies responsible for that blight no longer exist and can’t be held accountable for addressing it.

The company that owned the land prior to the U. — which did not contribute to the toxins — tried to remediate some of the chemicals, including chlorinated compounds that are carcinogens, spending $100,000 and making little progress.

After it secured the land in 2021, the U. leased the plot to another company to use for offices, storage equipment and space to do diesel truck repairs. That way the school could collect money from the lease while it made plans for the space and not leave the site vacant in the process. The remaining building was demolished, though, in 2023 when that company folded.

The U. has already removed materials containing asbestos that were part of the structure.

Industrial past disadvantages west-side

Documents show that the parcel now owned by the U. has been in use for 127 years.

It started as a small multi-tenant building in 1898. In 1911, the space transitioned into a soap-producing company. It was then, in succession, a poultry processing factory, a repair business for cars and heavy equipment, a heating plant and a paint shop.

Those uses took a toll.

“The site shows evidence of historical releases (over 40 years) from past industrial operations that include leaking, spilling, solvent use, water storage and disposal, wastewater discharge and staining,” according to the U.’s report to the EPA about the site.

The U. says the history of the area has also disproportionately disadvantaged residents living on the west-side of Salt Lake City.

Already, those residents see lower household incomes than the averages across the larger county, according to data presented by the U. in the report.

And the contaminants at the plot and across the area are also adversely impacting health. The chemicals are “directly contributing to asthma issues.” About 10% of west-side Salt Lake City adults have asthma, compared to 8% nationally, the U. says.

“Residents in the area endure a disproportionate share of socioeconomic marginalization related to environmental burdens from the legacy of pollution,” the report notes.

Isabeau Tavo, associate director of the U.’s real estate development arm, said the university wants to be a good steward in the community and improve outcomes for residents — with health and education.

That mission also aligns with the school’s current construction of a new hospital in West Valley City, the second largest city in the state and one that sits on the west-side of Salt Lake County.

It won’t be a fast process, though, to address the chemicals at the site. The timeline is still being adjusted, but the initial submission to the EPA shows the U. doing an initial groundwater treatment by this December and a second by December 2027.

Final cleanup reports would be submitted by the U. to the agency in 2029. It is not exactly clear yet when construction would start or be finished for the new campus.

What’s next

The U. has been pushing in recent years to expand its campus.

Last year, the school purchased for $38 million a coveted spot on 400 South just north of the City Library for a new satellite campus in the heart of downtown.

That building, too, will require updates. It was first constructed to house Cellular One, which later became AT&T. But the existing infrastructure makes that project easier than the west-side campus addition.

On Thursday, the U. had renderings set up on easels showing what it wants the west-side project to look like when it’s done. It’s vibrant and colorful, with people walking around.

The initial plan is for that campus to include classrooms and research space. Most of the specific details are still being figured out.

“It’s still early on,” Tavo said.

The U. anticipates it will construct the future building through a public-private partnership with state funding and donations. But while the exact plans are not concrete, the university envisions the space to undergo a big transformation into its next era and a new legacy for the west-side.