Learn from your Mistakes or Repeat Them

I often find myself wondering if there's anyone driving this bus.  First, in spite of completely failing to get Craig Mecham off the dime with his Sugar House pit, Salt Lake City has greenlighted Red Mountain Retail Group's mixed use redevelopment of the rest of that block and the one adjacent.  I'm no fan of the Granite Furniture Warehouse, but we don't exactly need another chain-linked hole in the ground on that block.  The City says this one is different because Red Mountain has all its financing in place.  Yeah, right.  Mecham said the same thing.  So did General Growth Properties with the Cottonwood Mall.  Show me the money.

Meanwhile, on the South End Sand Pile, R&B SunCrest has walked out of negotiations to take over the SunCrest development, claiming Draper is not acting in good faith.  What that really means is that Draper, to the shock of everyone, is not rolling over, taking R&B and Zions Bank off the hook, and agreeing to stick the already thoroughly ripped off citizens of Draper with the entire bill to fix that mess.  Bully for Draper.  Unfortunately, Draper has done little if anything to change the ordinances and procedures that made SunCrest possible in the first place, so it continues to permit time bombs and will be crisis hopping for awhile.

As an aside, I have to wonder about Zions Bank.  As a result of the SunCrest collapse, Zions ordered Draper to close its accounts and find another bank.  That's the sort of "take your ball and go home" behavior one expects on a playground, not from a major financial player.  It could be a blessing in disguise for Draper, though.  Zions has taken some serious hits in the last year, from having to pull off-book garbage back onto its books to having to take over busted banks at the FDIC's "request" to seizing crap collateral like SunCrest.  There's only so much that any business can absorb.  Maybe it's good that Draper moves on.