SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — H.B. 2 of the 2026 legislative session transfers operations of the Rio Grande Depot over to the University of Utah, something that’s raising concerns among the people behind the Rio Grande Plan.
The transfer was described as temporary by Governor Spencer Cox in his monthly press conference. The Governor said, “We’re not selling this to a private entity. It is still part of the state.”
Gov. Cox added that this transfer won’t get in the way of any future plans or proposed plans for the future of the depot, in fact, he insists necessary to keep them alive. He detailed, “It ended up being more expensive than we thought it was going to be, and we need someone in that space. We don’t we don’t want it to sit vacant. That’s really important. That would be the worst thing that could happen for those proposals to bring it back to kind of a former glory that it had before.”
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The former glory that the people behind the Rio Grande Plan want to see is the depot going back to being a hub for trains. While they agree with the governor that it shouldn’t sit vacant, they fear it won’t be easy to get the depot back from the U…