Question: Did the Church achieve its objectives with the City Creek Center project?

Most analysts agree that the City Creek project was successful in revitalizing downtown Salt Lake City:

New York Times

“The center has added 2,000 jobs and brought more than 16 million visitors into downtown,” according to the Economic Benchmark Report of 2013, paid for by the real estate firm CBRE. Taking into account the improving economy, the report credits the mall, at 50 South Main Street, with helping downtown retail sales increase by 36 percent, or $209 million, in 2012. The “mall is the single most important thing to happen to Salt Lake City in 50 years, maybe more,” said Bruce Bingham, a partner with Hamilton Partners, a Chicago-based real estate developer. “It revitalized downtown.”

Salt Lake Tribune

The International Council of Shopping Centers “selected City Creek Center — winner of a number of other awards since its 2012 debut — and the site's co-designer and operator Taubman Centers for its top accolade as "the most outstanding example of shopping center design and development for 2014-2015

"Main Street is thriving and it would not be if City Creek Center had not been built," said Jason Mathis, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, representing downtown merchants. "I attribute a lot of downtown's success to City Creek Center's development and the design."

BuildingSaltLake.com

“According to data from the Downtown Alliance, since City Creek opened, downtown retail sales have increased 46 percent, retail employment increased 83 percent and downtown hotel room bookings grew by 62 percent. The retail center’s presence also contributed to an 119.7 percent rise in retail wages, 26.9 in food service wages and 74.1 percent in hotel wages.”

While there are multiple factors that have led to the current boom downtown, based on the numbers City Creek has played an important role in bringing more development downtown. “This is our best example of a TOD (transportation oriented development),” said Reid Ewing, professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah. Ewing led a study looking at foot traffic downtown after City Creek opened and found that the block of Main Street between South Temple and 100 South had the highest pedestrian activity than any other block downtown. Ewing cited his vibrancy scale that measures vibrancy based on imageability, enclosure, human scale, transparency and complexity as an indicator of the health of downtown, especially near City Creek. “This (City Creek Center) has it all in terms of vibrancy,” said Ewing.