The name Larry H. Miller has been associated with a wide range of business companies: California’s bar dealerships in New Mexico, dozens of Multiscreen Megaplen Theaters, financial services, and the most prominent, the NBA Jazz Utah Franchise, which the signature bought in 1985 to ensure that the team remained in Utah.
By 2020, the company made a significant change, selling jazz and making a robust movement in large -scale commercial and commercial real estate development. Since then, Larry H. Miller Real Estate (LHMRE) has sent ripples through the construction and sports industry of the sports and leisure industry announcing billions in investments in two major developments: the planned master of the Daybreak community in the south of Jordan, Utah and the District Power project in 100 hectares in the western part of Salt Lake City.
“This time really started with the sale of jazz in 2020,” says David Cannon, president of LHMre’s commercial real estate. “The company was looking for ways to diversify us and this transferred us to a large-scale real-scale real estate development. We say:” We make the places where life takes place. “
In February 2021, not much after the sale of jazz, the LHMre team made its first significant investment, spending an amount not disseminated by 1,300 hectares uninvoteated in the New Daybreak community, 20 kilometers south -Salt Lake City. Shortly after the purchase, LHMre announced that they would start working at a new urban center in the Daybreak center in 200 hectares of brown field anchored by a new baseball park for the baseball franchise of the Minor League of Salt Lake Bees de Miller.
Daybreak settled in 2004 at about 4,100 hectares of land initially owned by a division of Kennecott Utah Copper (now a subsidiary of the international mining Rio Tinto mining). The firm has operated a copper mine in the next Bingham cannon since 1906. Focused around a 67 -hectare built lake, the community has been one of the most growing in the Salt Lake Valley. It includes about 45,000 people, now includes a combination of homes, retail sale, a health care clinic at Utah University, a county library and a light trax railway line that connects it to the Salt Lake metro area.
The Daybreak project will have a megaplex film room, restaurants, residential units, a community center and a retail space. A light railway stop connects development with Wasatch’s wider front.
[Note: The drawings are conceptual in nature and not intended to represent or be relied upon as specific designs for specific uses or outcomes.]
Courtesy of the courtesy lhmre
Build time with the market
Stephen James is the main head of LHMre’s Visioning, but was one of the architects involved in the development of the initial Daybreak Master Plan for Rio Tinto as part of a team that included associates of Calthorpe de Berkeley, California, Ken Kay Associates of San Francisco, Urban Design Associates in Pittsburgh and Architecture. from Salt Lake City. James says that Daybreak has been successful not only for the vision that was raised in the early master plan, but also due to the zoning of mixed use granted for the 4,100 hectares.
“It’s like chess,” says James. “You have different pieces and ways that move, and zoning allows us to build on time with the market or in front of the market and gives us a certain flexibility in the way of removing the movements. As a planifier for the use of the Earth, we want to do it with the attention to the fact that everything is united in a way that makes sense.”
Cannon says the LHMre team consulted the original master plan in the development of the new city center. “The most beautiful of this original master plan was that he created a great framework and exposed the goals and aspirations for this community. These plans always included an urban center in this area, [and] With our property in 2021, it was an opportunity to remove these plans and find out what an urban center could be, “he says.
“As a land planner, we want to do it with the attention to everything to join so that it makes sense.”
—Stephen James, head of vision, lhmre
The defining feature of the new city center will be the baseball park of $ 35 million, 7,500 places with views of the Wasatch Mountains. The site will also include a square with retail, restaurants, a new 75,000 square meter theater complex with bows and bowling alleys, a community center and an ice rink. At the end of March, the Transit Authority of Utah (UTA), along with the LHMre officials, cut the tape at a new Trax light railway stop, just outside the newly called Ballpark in America First Square.
Dave Fox, executive director of the UTA, says that the agency planners worked closely with the LHMre team, as well as with CRSA Design and Paulsen Construction, both from Salt Lake City, to select the location of the stop and open -before the first pitch at Ballpark in early April.
He says that Uta, the legislators, Larry H. Miller Real Estate and the city of South Jordan joined to accelerate the slight railway station “years before the calendar”, adding that it will allow the development to grow as a walking community planned with a small traffic congestion and easy -to -reach destinations.
The Hok World Architecture and Engineering Firm designed Baseball Park, and Okland Construction, based in Salt Lake City, is building the project through a CM/GC delivery contract. Okland will also deliver the Megaplex Theater/Entertainment Center and all the amenities that make up the first phase of development. Separately, LHMre is building the first of several multifamily residential projects near the stadium.
Cannon says that LHMRE currently has about $ 300 million on construction projects on the boards or on the site, and that complete construction is expected to exceed this level.
The vision of the power district includes a greater commitment to the Jordan River.
Courtesy of the courtesy lhmre
Rounding the bases
Allowing the baseball stadium to take longer than expected, delaying the start of construction. To compensate for time, Eric Barton, director of the Okland Construction project, says the contractor “changed the way we sequence -everything. We thought we would start with field buildings, but they ended up being the last things we did.”
The use of prefabricated elements for seats and prefabrication of the stadium by subcontractors also saved time and maintained the project during time. But get the steel and prefabricated elements to have challenges.
“We had to have the SOD elements and the field elements in mid-October, and then we couldn’t be inside, so we basically had to build it from the outside,” he adds.
“We were looking for other large -scale community construction opportunities. Places we can have an impact not only with real estate, but also with synergy in our companies.”
—David Cannon, President of Commercial Real Estate, LHMRE
Okland increased its crane to lift the entire prefabrication and steel up and above the outer shell. The equipment also went back when the specified electrical components were not available. Cache Valley Electric of Logan, Utah, located alternatives and worked with the Mean Engineering design team based in New York to house the change.
Although this is the first project of the Okland Stadium, the contractor has a long history with LHM companies, says Jeremy Blanck, an Okland project executive.
“We have built vehicle dealerships … in Arizona and Colorado and we have done a few megaplex theaters, but I feel that we really went to a new level in 2017 when we renovated $ 80 million from Delta Center.” Blanck says that the forecast that planned the area of 20,000 places for the Utah jazz showed LHMre’s commitment to the community -oriented building.
View on the west side
In February 2024, LHMRE announced the purchase of approximately 100 hectares of property adjacent to the Fairpark of the State of Utah and the Jordan River on the west side of Salt Lake City and presented the plans to invest about $ 3.5 billion in the development of a mixed district with the possibility of a stadium for a great franchise in the league. It has been called a Power District for the Gadsby power plant in the southwestern corner of the place that has been operated on since the mid-1950’s by public utility Rocky Mountain Power.
“We were looking for other large -scale community creation opportunities. Places that we can have an impact not only with real estate, but also with synergy in our companies,” says Cannon.
RMP owned most of the site, which includes its office building in addition to the power plant. The utility will retain the property and continue to operate the plant and hired LHMRE for the construction of a new office building.
LHMre works with the Sasaki international design firm to develop a master plan for the site, and James says that the “good bones” in the power district make it especially attractive. In addition to being anchored by Fairpark and the river, the site is connected to the light railing on the north side and has easy access to the I-15 and I-80, the Jordan River path and a proposed development for Green Belt Salt Lake.
The developer also leads the League Gran Utah, a coalition of federal, state and local decision makers, business and community leaders, former MLB basketball players and possible investors, in pressure for a large league franchise with the power district as a favorite place for the team’s home field. But James says that development will advance with or without an important league team because the plan is not only to activate a long latent brown field, but also to energize the surrounding communities.
“This could be a space of flexion where many people flood for a baseball game or the state fair and then leave, but we want to do something that does not feel empty or out of scale for the rest of the time,” he says.
He adds that they will continue to seek opportunities for large -scale developments in Utah and in the Interountain region. LHMre will also have a refreshment of its Jordan Commons development in Sandy, Utah, which includes the company’s headquarters and a megaplex entertainment complex.
