A new urban node is developing around the 1940 West North Temple TRAX Station. The area is already a large employment sector with several state offices just north of the station, but now hundreds of new residential units are coming to the area potentially adding over a thousand new residents within a block of the TRAX station.

Seattle-based developers, Lake Union Partners, will soon start construction on the Orange Street Apartments, a 263-unit residential project on a 5-acre parcel at the intersection of Orange Street and North Temple. The project includes two L-shaped, four-story buildings that will front both North Temple and Orange Street. The units will all be market rate with 26 studio, 184 one-bedroom and 53 two-bedroom units.

The residential buildings will each wrap around a surface parking lot with a 1:1 parking ratio. The project is less than a block from a TRAX station and aAmenities will include a pool, clubhouse, fitness center and a midblock pedestrian walkway that will bisect both buildings.

The Orange Street Apartments is one of four projects in development within a block of the 1940 West TRAX Station. Construction has started on the second phase of the West Station Apartments, a 148 market rate unit project just north of North Temple on Redwood Road. The first phase (directly east of the Sutherlands Lumber store) opened in 2015 and also includes 148 units. Two other projects are proposed for the area that will add an additional 200 units.

After the four projects in development are completed, 760 residential units will be added to this stretch of North Temple since the Airport TRAX line opened in 2013. Those new units are in addition to two residential projects already in the neighborhood, the suburban-designed Sky Harbor Apartments and the Freedom Landing Apartments, a housing development for homeless veterans.

In the three years that the Airport TRAX line has been running, just the 1940 West and Guadalupe TRAX stations have been able to attract new development. Both stations are also the east and west bookends of the North Temple Corridor and are both just outside of the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake’s North Temple Project Area.

The project area was created to encourage development along North Temple and create a “grand boulevard” along the corridor. Over the summer a coalition of westside stakeholders, including both Fairpark and Poplar Grove Community Councils, West View Media and NeighborWorks Salt Lake, launched the Restore North Temple project, a community-led effort to ensure that the “grand boulevard” vision is effectuated.

The Orange Street Apartments is one of six projects near North Temple designed by the architectural firm, Architecture Belgique. The firm designed the recently completed North Sixth Apartments and the under-construction 4th West Apartments as well as several other North Temple-adjacent projects going through the planning and building permit process.

The Orange Street development replaces a vacant commercial business center. Developers have received the needed building permits but are not waiting for approval of a demolition permit before construction can begin.