After a five-month competition, Boston architect Moshe Safdie and local partner Valentine Crane persuaded Salt Lake City Library administrators they were best suited to design the new $53-million downtown library and civic plaza. “This was a difficult call,” Library Director Nancy Tessman told the Salt Lake City Tribune April 8. “There were serious debates and discussions about the merits of all [four] of these contenders,” she said.
Library and city officials have never wanted to simply replace the existing structure, the paper reported, but were looking for a firm that would listen to their views. Safdie’s winning vision was a triangular structure of acid-etched concrete encircled with a descending wall.
Tessman expected the design process to take about one year, groundbreaking to take place in spring or summer 2000, and the opening to occur late in 2002. She cautioned that the building they end up with may not come close to the one originally proposed; she wants to see it “personalized for Salt Lake City.”
Posted April 12, 1999.