Ryan Smith is said to have talked to Salt Lake City And Draper officials.
The arena game has started in Salt Lake City, Utah. The owner of the National Basketball Association’s Utah Jazz, Ryan Smith, may have two areas that might want to help him build an arena or an arena-village. Salt Lake City and Draper, Utah. The chosen municipality would house Smith’s NBA business and potentially be the home to a National Hockey League franchise and perhaps serve as a venue for the 2034 Winter Olympics. It appears Salt Lake City is the only viable candidate for that event which is a decade away. The present arena opened in 1991. The building is an anomaly in that the then Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller put up his own money for the construction of the arena. Miller did get a corporate sponsor on the building’s marquee but when Salt Lake City backers hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, he was not allowed to use the corporate name while hosting Olympic events because the International Olympic Committee prohibits the use of corporate names to be used during its events. Of course, if the corporation is an IOC partner, that sports organization probably would allow the corporate name to be part of the Olympic event.
According to reports around the Salt Lake City area, Ryan Smith and his associates met with Point of the Mountain in Draper leaders about a year ago. Meanwhile, Salt Lake City mayor Erin Mendenhall is “working hard” to keep the NBA franchise downtown. Draper apparently has enough land that would allow Smith to build an arena-village complete with the sports venue. Smith’s possible Draper plan would include restaurants, bars, hotels, stores and other businesses. An entertainment district is now part of a sports owners plan. A group in Alpharetta, Georgia is pushing to build an arena-village that would include an NHL state-of-the-art arena. The same thing may be happening in Utah.
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