Thousands of baseball fans will file into a brand new stadium in South Jordan today, eager to see the first glimpses of a new era of the Salt Lake Bees — one without Salt Lake City.
Those same fans will be walking past active construction sites on the way into The Ballpark at America First Square, at least until this summer when construction is expected to wrap up on a key part of the master planned community known as Daybreak.
The ballpark will anchor a section called Downtown Daybreak, which will expand in the coming years to include affordable housing units, a number of restaurants and other amenities. One such amenity featured in Downtown Daybreak is a new TRAX Red Line stop, which opened late last month.
Following an event celebrating the new TRAX stop, Larry H. Miller Company CEO Steve Starks told Building Salt Lake that Downtown Daybreak will soon be a hub of entertainment in southwestern Salt Lake County, and there’s plenty more to come.
The development caps off two decades of trying to turn thousands of acres of land that were previously contaminated by nearby mining activity into a walkable community.
The Bees are set to become central to that effort starting Tuesday, after the Miller Group moved the team out of the capital city.
“We have 200 acres here to develop, and so over the next decade, you’ll see thousands of housing units come online at different price points for affordability,” Starks said. “So if you wanted to have a more luxury experience at a rooftop looking over the Bees game, that experience is here. And then in other parts of the community, there will be more affordable options for people too. That’s part of the magic of Daybreak, is that you mixed in affordability at all levels, and that will continue in this urban center.”
Immediate plans for Downtown Daybreak
Downtown Daybreak will include more than just the 8,000-seat Bees stadium. The development will also feature 50,000 square feet of retail space, 15,000 square feet of office space and at least seven restaurants as part of its first phase of development, according to David Cannon, president of commercial real estate for LHM Real Estate.
Cannon said the first phase of Downtown Daybreak also includes a mixed-use development with 190 apartment units — which will be located just beyond the ballpark’s right field wall. The building would consist of mostly one- and two-bedroom apartments, though there will be three-bedroom and studio units included, Cannon said.
The building would include five stories of residential and two stories of parking, and it’s expected to deliver in Q4 of 2026.
The new ballpark won’t be the only anchor of Daybreak’s entertainment district, as the area will also feature a new 75,000-square-foot Larry H. Miller Megaplex movie theater — with 12 theaters with luxury seats, an arcade and bowling alley. The Megaplex is slated to open later this summer.
The area will also have the Rio Tinto Kennecott Stage, an amphitheater that will feature concerts and other entertainment starting in May. In the winter, that area will become an outdoor ice skating rink.
Three restaurants have already been announced for the area, though opening days aren’t immediately known. Cannon said other restaurant leases have been signed and other businesses have signed letters of intent, but those restaurants haven’t yet been announced.
Moena Cafe is a Hawaiian restaurant with a location in Honolulu, according to its website.
Hires Big H, a longtime local burger joint with locations in Salt Lake City and Midvale, will open its doors in Daybreak later this summer. It’s the first new location for the restaurant in over 30 years, according to its Instagram.
Nomad Eatery will open its third location in Downtown Daybreak, and the restaurant offers pizza, salads and sandwiches. The Daybreak location will be the first outside of Salt Lake City, as its other locations are found in Yalecrest and inside Glendale’s Uinta Brewing.
Future plans
Beyond the first phase of Downtown Daybreak will lie further development, some of which is already built and functioning.
To the southeast of the ballpark sit stations for the South Jordan Fire Department and South Jordan Police, which opened in 2021.
The Daybreak Library branch and a University of Utah health center are also nearby, and the latter includes an urgent care, an emergency room and other services.
In addition to the U’s health center, Cannon said the university also owns roughly 90 acres to the north of Downtown Daybreak, which he said would be used for a satellite campus.
Another feature in the works is the Miller Family Arts Center, which would be located between the ballpark and the University of Utah health center. Cannon said the center will have an 800-seat theater, performance space, a visual arts gallery and other amenities. A hotel will likely be included in the area’s plans as well.
Affordable housing units are also slated to be built near Downtown Daybreak in the coming years. Cannon said around 400 units — a little over 10% of the housing units in Downtown Daybreak — are planned to be affordable via Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, or LIHTC.
Documents shared with Building Salt Lake show the 400 units — which would be dedicated to workforce housing — would be built in two phases over the next three years. The first phase would include a 203-unit building with one-, two- and three-bedroom units offered to tenants who make between 50% and 70% AMI, depending on the unit.
Cannon said that despite the sweeping plans, there’s still plenty of room for flexibility, as further plans for Downtown Daybreak will shift as the market changes. Either way, he said Downtown Daybreak will continue to spread over the next few decades, and future development includes more housing and more amenities to tie the community together.
“When you think about a complete community that’s a true walkable urban place, our goal and our intent is to bring all sorts of services — grocery, shopping, professional services, all those sorts of things into the community,” Cannon said.
A ‘unicorn’ of urban design
For people like Mike Hathorne, a longtime Daybreak resident and principal planner by trade, the future of Downtown Daybreak is bright.
Hathorne — a former employee of LHM Real Estate who managed the residential design review process — said LHM did its homework on designing the area around the ballpark, incorporating design elements from entertainment hubs elsewhere in the nation. But it’s much more than that.
“We need to remember that Downtown Daybreak includes a hospital, it includes a library, and it will include a performing arts center,” Hathorne said. “The entertainment and hospitality around the ballpark will be fantastic.”
He said there are few other developments like Daybreak in the country, due in part to the entitlements that allow LHM to have a strong say in how the land is built out.
“Daybreak is a very, very unique animal in the development world,” Hathorne told Building Salt Lake. “It has a unicorn set of entitlements that allows the master developer to have tremendous oversight over the project that is frankly unprecedented.”
He said the zoning and entitlements for Daybreak allow for tremendous flexibility, which is crucial for developers trying to accommodate whatever market needs that exist. Hathorne said that Daybreak offers some of Utah’s only urbanized living spaces outside of Salt Lake City, and its well-planned design sets it apart from nearly any other development around the country.
“When you look at (Wasatch Front Regional Council’s) regional plans for how we should be executing development in Salt Lake County, Downtown Daybreak is following that model in delivering a center on transit,” Hathorne said. “It is doing exactly what we want and need in this market, and at great expense and at tremendous speed. The speed in which Larry H. Miller is doing this relative to the investment that they’re making is unprecedented. I mean, who else can do that?”
