Then the mayor\u2019s attention lands on a cluster of barren industrial lots on the city\u2019s west side. It doesn\u2019t look like much on a map, but it could be the future home of a Major League Baseball expansion franchise.<\/p>\n
An MLB team would be a seismic addition for Utah\u2019s already exploding sports scene. \u201cIt has grown almost exponentially,\u201d Mendenhall says, \u201cbut it doesn\u2019t feel like a reach, because Salt Lake City has been evolving right alongside the sports market.\u201d<\/p>\n
A market once monopolized by the NBA\u2019s Utah Jazz has emerged as America\u2019s next sports boomtown, with the arrival of an NHL franchise<\/a>, frontrunner status in MLB expansion, and the return of the Winter Olympics<\/a> in 2034. Salt Lake City\u2019s transformation into a Mountain West sports hub seems sudden. But those involved describe it as a \u201ccrescendo\u201d of two decades of methodical planning since the 2002 Winter Olympics to situate Utah as a year-round sporting destination. That crescendo has swelled into a cacophony of construction sounds throughout the Salt Lake Valley.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a light snow falling one January morning as a soaring, clanging drill rig bores holes to fortify the foundation of a 10-story office building \u2014 the first structure going up at the Power District. The Larry H. Miller Company\u2019s $3.5 billion project is turning west-side industrial lots into mixed-use development and, perhaps, a ballpark district.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the pioneers came into the valley, they said, \u2018This is the place,<\/a>\u2019\u201d says Steve Starks, the company\u2019s CEO. \u201cWhat we\u2019ve said, as it relates to Major League Baseball, is this is the place \u2014 and we\u2019re ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Readiness has put Utah at an advantage. While other cities announced their entries into MLB expansion consideration with renderings and merch, Salt Lake City arrived with a 100-acre site, a coalition of prominent Utahns<\/a>, broad bipartisan support, a plan for public funding and a reputable anchor investor. Gail Miller took over the LHM Company after her husband, Larry, the auto dealer who saved the Jazz<\/a> from relocating, died in 2009. Now, after selling the Jazz<\/a> and the family\u2019s fleet of car dealerships, Gail and her children are leading efforts to land an MLB franchise. Commissioner Rob Manfred wants the league\u2019s next expansion cities settled before he retires in 2029<\/a>. Utah\u2019s Power District presents a turnkey option.<\/p>\n City and state officials are not subtle about their aspirations. They want Salt Lake City to be a larger dot on the map. Part of their plan is to continue building a robust sports scene. \u201cWe need baseball to kind of round it out,\u201d says Stuart Adams, Utah\u2019s Senate President. \u201cThen we\u2019ll go after something else later \u2014 that other sport.\u201d (The NFL.)<\/p>\n The market is already bigger than you\u2019d think, yet not nearly as big as it could become. The population of the Salt Lake City-Provo-Orem corridor, now nearly 3 million, has roughly doubled since MLB last expanded in 1998. That surge is one of the forces driving the evolution of Utah sports, as are the state\u2019s economic forecast and its pro-business, sports-friendly legislature. But the \u201csecret sauce,\u201d says Jeff Robbins of the Utah Sports Commission, is how the state\u2019s public and private stakeholders work in unison to prepare for new opportunities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t mess around in Utah,\u201d Adams says. \u201cWe\u2019re ready, willing and able.\u201d<\/p>\n Scott Sandall, a Republican member of the Utah State Senate, compares it to being invited to a black-tie event. As others scurry to get ready, he says, \u201cWe have our tuxedo on. And we\u2019re there a half hour early.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahead of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony earlier this month, an 82-year-old Utahn woman with white hair and a warm smile carried the Olympic torch through a shopping center in downtown Milan, Italy. Crowds pressed close. She waved. They cheered. It was Gail Miller\u2019s second Olympic torch relay. The first, 24 years ago, was in her hometown of Salt Lake City.<\/p>\n A large contingent traveled from Salt Lake City to Milan to look ahead to the 2034 Winter Olympics. If anything, Olympic officials said<\/a>, Utah is overprepared. Venues are ready. Organizers have raised more than $250 million from private and corporate donors, plus a pledge from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, for financial support, volunteers and use of its land.<\/p>\n When the 2002 Winter Olympics came to town, Utah governor Spencer Cox says, \u201cThere was a little bit of an inferiority complex. Like, can we pull this off?\u201d Afterward, the state began to dream bigger. Only four years later, Robbins traveled to Turin, Italy, to ask Peter Ueberroth, the then-president of the United States Olympic Committee, how soon Utah could host again.<\/p>\n The Olympics will return in 2034 to a radically different Utah. Since 2002, the state has added NHL, MLS, NWSL, pro lacrosse and softball franchises. It has hosted UFC fight nights, X Games and an NBA All-Star Game. An NHL Winter Classic is next. The University of Utah and Brigham Young University athletic programs are flush with financing. There are gleaming athletic facilities all over the region \u2014 new ballparks for the Utes and the Salt Lake Bees (the Miller-owned Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels), state-of-the-art practice facilities for the Jazz and the NHL\u2019s Utah Mammoth, an under-renovation Delta Center and more.<\/p>\n \u201cMost people are surprised that there\u2019s so much in the middle of nowhere,\u201d says Derek Miller, president of the Salt Lake Chamber.<\/p>\n Ryan Smith, the billionaire owner of the Jazz and Mammoth<\/a>, believes there\u2019s another reason for Utah\u2019s momentum: a better narrative being told. \u201cWe\u2019re doing a much better job as a state saying, \u2018Actually, this is who we are,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The story told about Utah and its capital city hasn\u2019t always been marketable. Insular. Boring. A Latter-day Saints bubble.\u00a0<\/p>\n Sport has a way of softening differences. After arriving from New Orleans in 1979, the Jazz served as a \u201ccultural bridge\u201d between Utah and the rest of the United States, says professor Matthew Bowman, the Mormon Studies chair at Claremont Graduate University. Yet their existence wasn\u2019t entirely secular. Before buying his first stake in the Jazz in 1984, Larry Miller sought counsel from Gordon B. Hinckley, president of the LDS Church. Hinckley spoke of the \u201cpotential for good in the millions of tiny impressions\u201d made every time people heard the Jazz mentioned, Miller wrote in his autobiography: \u201cHe knew that keeping the team in the state would be beneficial for Utah and, by extension, for the image of the Church in Utah.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Construction is already underway at the site of the Power District, a downtown sports-and-entertainment hub. (Courtesy of the Larry H. Miller Company)<\/p>\n At times, NBA players have delivered some of the state\u2019s most scathing critiques. Derek Harper nixed a trade<\/a> to the Jazz in 1997, saying, \u201cYou go live in Utah.\u201d In 2021, Jazz guard Deron Williams said he gave up trying to recruit players<\/a> there. Visiting players mocked<\/a> the lack of nightlife<\/a> and rated it as the city where they least liked to play<\/a>. After five years with the team \u2014 a stretch during which multiple Jazz fans were issued bans for racist remarks<\/a> toward visiting players and their families<\/a> \u2014 star Donovan Mitchell said upon departing, it was \u201cdraining\u201d<\/a> to be a Black man advocating for racial equality<\/a> in Utah.<\/p>\n Increasingly, Utah has sought to refresh its image. Politicians describe it as a place of natural splendor and big spenders. They cite research rating Utah as the youngest and healthiest U.S. state, and among the top states in population growth, family size, economic outlook and upward mobility. They are working to avoid environmental disaster<\/a> and restore the Great Salt Lake<\/a>. Though the church still holds outsized influence in state politics and owns large swaths of property in downtown Salt Lake City, the surrounding county is now minority Latter-day Saints<\/a>. The capital city is increasingly diverse. It\u2019s not hard to find a drink. (But could we interest you in a dirty soda<\/a>?) Utah is having a moment<\/a> in pop culture, too, with social media influencers and reality shows<\/a> suggesting to a global audience that the housewives there are as real as those in Beverly Hills. In time, Bowman says, \u201cI suspect the sense that Utah is an inhospitable place will begin to fade.\u201d<\/p>\n The story Smith tells about Utah is one of limitless growth. In 2002, the year the Winter Olympics first came to Utah, Smith co-founded the market analytics company Qualtrics in his family\u2019s Provo basement. The company sold in 2018 for $8 billion. The \u201cSilicon Slopes,\u201d a vibrant tech ecosystem, are teeming with young talent and ready to do business, Smith says. \u201cIf I learned anything in tech,\u201d he adds, \u201cyou always bet on youth, and the future of where it\u2019s going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Nothing lends credence to the viability of another Big Four franchise in Salt Lake City like three nail-biting periods at the Delta Center. It\u2019s a midseason game on a school night after the holidays, yet there\u2019s a capacity crowd ready to explode at every shot and skirmish. Fans wear sweaters and beanies branded with a \u201cMountain Mammoth\u201d logo unveiled nine months ago<\/a>, losing their minds over a team that didn\u2019t exist two years ago. They flash \u201cTusks Up\u201d<\/a> with their hands. And to think that all this newness sprouted from the husk of the financially floundering<\/a> Arizona Coyotes.<\/p>\n During an intermission, father and son Breck and Jaxson Fullmer follow the fans spilling into the concourse for a bite to eat. Jaxson wears a Boston Red Sox cap; like many Utahns, he has inherited a cluster of random allegiances. Breck grew up in Provo. In his youth, he almost never went to Salt Lake City. Now he and Jaxson are there often, drawn downtown by the hum of activity.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s energy. There\u2019s a vibe. There\u2019s a lot more to do,\u201d Breck says.<\/p>\n Earlier that afternoon, Smith pulled up a chair beside his wife, Ashley, and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for a news conference at Rice-Eccles Stadium, where the Utes play, to announce it as the site of the 2027 Winter Classic. Bettman began: \u201cIf I would have suggested such an announcement three years ago, people would have thought we were making it up.\u201d<\/p>\n In the front row, Mendenhall, the Democrat mayor, sat beside Cox, the Republican governor. Growing up in rural Utah, Cox said, the only thing that brought Utahns together was the Jazz \u2014 a bond strong enough to overcome religious differences, party lines or college rivalries. He hears echoes of that in the way fans have embraced the Mammoth.<\/p>\n Robbins, who has run the Utah Sports Commission since it was founded in 2000, has worked with five gubernatorial administrations on his organization\u2019s efforts to rebrand Utah as \u201cthe state of sport.\u201d Had Cox, like some of his predecessors, not shared Robbins\u2019 view of sports franchises as strategic state assets, the story told about Salt Lake City\u2019s sports scene ahead of the Olympics\u2019 return might read more like a cautionary tale.<\/p>\n In early 2024, when Smith was deep in discussions to buy the Coyotes\u2019 hockey assets, he was considering relocating both the Jazz and the potential NHL expansion franchise south along the Wasatch Front, where Smith Entertainment Group would build a new, custom-fit arena closer to the state\u2019s population center in Utah County. Almost all sports owners want a sports-and-entertainment district \u2014 a veritable cash cow \u2014 around their venue; and, as with The Battery in the Atlanta suburbs<\/a>, space is more plentiful and less costly outside the city. In Utah, officials faced the prospect of having several franchises in the southern suburbs \u2014\u00a0Smith\u2019s NHL and NBA teams in Draper, the Millers\u2019 MLS and NWSL clubs in Sandy and the Triple-A Bees in South Jordan \u2014 and none left in Salt Lake City itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what gave me sleepless nights,\u201d Derek Miller says.<\/p>\n The future of the Utah sports scene was sealed in one legislative session<\/a> in 2024. Lawmakers, with the backing<\/a> of the church, passed a bill granting Smith Entertainment Group up to $900 million to create a sports-and-entertainment district around the Delta Center. Another $900 million bill to fund stadium construction at the Power District will be triggered if Utah gets an MLB team. As part of the agreements struck then, the Jazz and Mammoth will stay in Salt Lake City for at least 50 years.<\/p>\n Pushing across nearly $2 billion in public funding for the sports projects induced sticker shock for some. David Berri, a sports economist and professor at Southern Utah University, told Crain Currency<\/a> that the deal keeping the Jazz downtown was unlikely to generate economic growth: \u201cSalt Lake City would desperately like to be thought of as a major city, so they need a basketball team,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s unfair because we\u2019re shuffling taxpayer money to someone who\u2019s fabulously wealthy.\u201d Lawmakers argued the state would be far worse off without sporting events boosting the capital city\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n \u201cI have concerns like every citizen out there about public participation in financing projects for very wealthy people,\u201d Cox says. \u201cI have no interest in just helping with a stadium upgrade or building something like that. What I do have an interest in is revitalizing the downtown of our capital city, which is incredible. And I have a huge interest in the west side of Salt Lake that has been underinvested in for generations.\u201d<\/p>\n Luz Escamilla, the Democrat state senator representing the district encompassing Salt Lake City\u2019s west-side neighborhoods \u2014 a diverse, working-class area in which the main attractions for decades have been the Utah State Fairpark and the famed Mexican restaurant Red Iguana \u2014 hears progress in whirring construction machinery. The Power District development is moving forward even if MLB expands elsewhere, or not at all, so billions of dollars are being poured into the district as the city\u2019s downtown footprint expands westward.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been begging the state for years: We need to help the west side,\u201d Escamilla says. \u201cThis community has been told so many times, \u2018We\u2019re going to invest.\u2019 It never happens. It\u2019s happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n The windows of the governor\u2019s office in the State Capitol building look west toward the steam stacks of the Power District. Cox often finds himself thinking about watching MLB games there one day.<\/p>\n \u201cI like our chances,\u201d he says. \u201cI really do.\u201d<\/p>\n When Dale Murphy retired from baseball in 1994, after two MVPs with the Atlanta Braves and 18 seasons in the majors, he and his wife, Nancy, settled their family in Alpine, Utah. Murphy is from Portland, Oregon, born and raised, but because he converted to the Latter-day Saints and clean living while in the minor leagues, he became a fan favorite in Utah.<\/p>\n After moving there, Murphy was regularly asked whether an MLB club could survive in Salt Lake City. \u201cI was always like, well, there\u2019s not a lot of people that live here,\u201d Murphy says.<\/p>\n This past decade, as other U.S. cities launched early MLB expansion efforts, Murphy signed on as an ambassador of Portland\u2019s MLB project. Starks, the LHM Company CEO, texted in the spring of 2023 asking Murphy to support Salt Lake City\u2019s plan instead. Starks took Murphy to the Power District. They walked the proposed ballpark site and talked through the Miller family\u2019s vision. An MLB team in Utah? Murphy can see it now. \u201cI used to say, \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cNow it\u2019s like, \u2018Absolutely.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n It no longer requires squinting to see Salt Lake City as a big-league market. It now ranks as the 27th-largest U.S. media market<\/a>, up seven spots in the past decade and ahead of current MLB markets Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego, Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee. A club in Utah would fill a gap in MLB\u2019s geographic footprint<\/a> \u2014 a Mountain West partner to sit between Las Vegas and Denver \u2014 without cannibalizing an existing market. Salt Lake City has been a minor-league town since 1901. It had a rookie-ball club that set the longest win streak<\/a> in American pro baseball history. But what cemented the city in baseball lore is a dusty field a few minutes\u2019 drive from the Power District: the sandlot from \u201cThe Sandlot<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also not difficult to see how the Power District would work as a ballpark district. The site is easily accessible, bordered by three interstates and a light-rail line, and situated between the city\u2019s central business district and the airport, a five-minute drive from each. That proximity would be rare in any major-league metropolis; finding 100 acres of developable land so close to downtown, almost unheard of. \u201cIt\u2019s an unparalleled opportunity,\u201d Starks says. \u201cLike The Battery, but five minutes from downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a chainlink fence encircling the proposed stadium site. That spot was previously occupied by industrial tanks that stored tar and pitch for a power plant, the one still standing there, with its three steam stacks looming like towering baseball bats. The storage tanks are gone. Long grass grows there instead. There are plans to turn the dilapidated, paved-over Jordan River into a crown feature of the stadium site, complete with a riverwalk, close enough for home-run balls to splash down.<\/p>\n Directly across the river from the proposed stadium site, there\u2019s a gravel parking lot that used to be a softball field. Gail Miller brought the couple\u2019s first child there at two days old to watch her husband, Larry, play softball.<\/p>\n Larry Miller had an active mind, and whenever he really got going on an idea, he\u2019d talk about \u201ctape transfers\u201d \u2014 sharing what he was seeing in his head.<\/p>\n \u201cI wish you could see it, too,\u201d he\u2019d say.<\/p>\n His son Steve, chairman of the board of directors for the LHM Company, is having that feeling. He\u2019s imagining Utah\u2019s first Opening Day. He sees a packed stadium, crowds on the riverwalk, kayaks in the water. The sun is starting to descend, casting a golden hue across the white-capped peaks of the Wasatch Mountains beyond the outfield wall.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all there,\u201d he says. \u201cIt just needs to be created.\u201d<\/p>\n Back inside the City-County building, Mendenhall steps off the chair and away from the map. She surveys a changing city. There\u2019s no question MLB will thrive in Utah, the mayor says. Only when. \u201cWhen the rest of the sports world looks at us,\u201d she says, \u201cI hope they know that this is where anything is possible. We\u2019re just the right size. We have just the right momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/The-Power-District-Construction-2-scaled.jpg\")
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