A rendering depicts the first phase of The Point, a project state leaders have envisioned on 600 acres of land now freed up for development after the state moved its prison from Draper to Salt Lake City. (Courtesy of the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority)
Utah’s top state leaders — Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams, and House Speaker Mike Schultz — and other dignitaries all gathered at a construction site in Bluffdale to don hard hats and climb into several big excavators.
After briefly learning the controls, the governor, House speaker and Senate president dug the machines’ clawed buckets into the dirt to ceremoniously break ground on a crucial road for the first phase of a massive, state-owned development on 600 acres of prime real estate near the south end of the Salt Lake Valley.
“It’s unlike anything else happening in the country,” Cox told the crowd during the ceremony.
The project — called The Point , named for its location in the Point of the Mountain area, also home to Utah’s tech hub known as Silicon Slopes — has been more than a decade in the making. But Tuesday marked a major milestone as crews began work on Porter Rockwell Boulevard, which Point of the Mountain State Land Authority planners say will be a “critical backbone” that will “catalyze” The Point’s development at the heart of the property.