Friday, May 7, 1999

BY LEE SIEGEL 1999, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Based on California consultants' advice, Salt Lake City will not issue a building permit for a $47.5 million expansion of the Salt Palace Convention Center until more research is done to determine if an active earthquake fault runs beneath the site.

"Everything is on hold until this is resolved," Roger Evans, the city's director of building services, said Thursday.

Stuart Reid, the city's director of community and economic development, said: "Our first consideration has to be the soundness of construction and engineering of that building and the safety of the occupants who will use it. Until we have adequate information . . . we cannot in good conscience proceed."

If more study fails to establish the existence or absence of a fault, Reid said he will issue a permit because "if someone cannot tell us there is a fault there, we should not assume there is."

Craig Nelson, former geologist for Salt Lake County, criticized that stand, asking: "Is that in the best interest of public safety?"

The decision to hold up a building permit for the 200,000-square-foot expansion came this week after the city received a draft report from Cotton, Shires & Associates, a Los Gatos, Calif., consulting firm. The city paid Cotton, Shires about $10,000 to review conflicting studies of the Salt Palace site by two other firms.

One of those reports, by geologist David Simon of Simon-Bymaster Inc., concluded the southern end of the Wasatch fault's Warm Springs segment likely runs beneath the Salt Palace site.

The other report, by Scott Davis and colleagues at Kleinfelder Inc., argues severe disruption of sediments at the site was not caused by an on-site fault, but happened when a major prehistoric quake on a nearby fault made the ground liquefy -- or behave like quicksand -- and spread apart as much as 3 feet horizontally and drop downward as much as 6 feet. Kleinfelder said that because the water table now is lower, only 3 inches of movement is likely in a future quake.

Cotton, Shires' report sharply questioned that finding, and said neither Simon-Bymaster nor Kleinfelder provided compelling evidence to support their conflicting conclusions, even though the two reports cost the county, which owns the Salt Palace, about $250,000. The California firm urged more extensive studies, agreeing with Simon that Kleinfelder did not do enough tests to rule out a fault.

If more study finds a quake fault at the site, "the proposed expansion of the Salt Palace may prove untenable," wrote geologist William Cotton and engineer Patrick Shires. Even if there is no fault on the site, liquefaction from a future quake could be just as risky for the Salt Palace, they added.

Simon refused to comment on the new report. Davis, Kleinfelder's geotechnical manager, said the firm stands by its conclusions no fault exists at the site and no more than 3 inches of movement would result from ground liquefaction during a future major quake -- a conclusion that prompted the county to design a stronger foundation for the planned expansion.

"I don't know that any amount of investigation will ever 100 percent resolve the [fault] issue," said Davis, who expects Kleinfelder will do the additional studies. "It's not an exact science."

Salt Lake County Commissioner Brent Overson said additional studies will take two to four weeks and cost another $100,000. He said the planned August 2000 completion of the expansion likely will be delayed until September 2000, thwarting plans for the Outdoor Retailers Market to use the expansion for its convention on Aug. 9-12, 2000. The convention could draw up to 23,000 people.

It also is possible the county might abandon plans to expand the Salt Palace south to 200 South, and instead expand westward to 300 West, Overson said, noting that would delay completion until November 2000.

The delay of a major construction project due to seismic concerns apparently is unprecedented in Utah. Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City passed ordinances in the 1980s banning building directly across a fault line -- the place where an underground fault intersects the ground surface and can tear apart overlying buildings. Yet many buildings have been erected on or near faults without legally required investigations to look for faulting.

No other Utah construction site has received such intensive study for the presence of faulting.

"We're setting a very fine example for future construction in Salt Lake City," Overson said.

Rick Davis, president of the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau, said: "If there had been as much money and as much study for every other construction project in the area, I doubt we'd have any construction going on at all."

The Salt Palace books three conventions each month. Delaying expansion could prompt some to move to other cities. That includes the Outdoor Retailers after their contract expires at the end of 2000, Rick Davis said.

"If it is not built, it could result in the loss of hundreds of conventions," he added.

The expanded Salt Palace is to be the media center for 9,000 journalists covering the the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. Olympic officials plan to occupy the Salt Palace starting in August 2001, so only a year's delay in the expansion would disrupt those plans, said Shelley Thomas, spokeswoman for the Salt Lake Organizing Committee.

"If there was no expansion, that would create serious problems," requiring officials to squeeze journalists into the existing Salt Palace, she added.

The city hired Cotton, Shires to review the Simon and Kleinfelder studies after the Utah Geological Survey (UGS) and its director, Lee Allison, refused to do so. The Tribune reported last month that Allison, the UGS and Salt Lake County Geologist Darlene Batatian were muzzled on the issue due to political pressure from Overson and Ted Stewart, Gov. Mike Leavitt's chief of staff. Stewart said he didn't mean to silence the geologists. Overson said the issue was not under the jurisdiction of the state or county geologist.

Allison said Thursday he will not get involved now because "the city has a good consultant doing a thorough analysis so the life-safety issue of whether to construct is being adequately addressed."

The Tribune reported in 1997 the $85 million Salt Palace was rebuilt during 1994-1996 without a legally required study to determine if a quake fault was present. The county ignored its own 1989 hazards map, which showed a possible extension of the Warm Springs fault running along the site's eastern edge. Salt Palace construction officials indicated that story prompted them to look for the fault before expanding the convention center.

UPDATE!