Salt Lake City, once an economy primarily based on agriculture and defense, has blossomed into a mecca for tech jobs with prime real estate to match.

The city’s transition into a modern economy has been in the works since the 1990s, but many argue the main catalyst for rapid development was when it was selected as the site for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.

In the years leading up to the international event, Utah went to work revitalizing its infrastructure, which to this day ranks among the best in the nation as evaluated by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

And locals who spoke with DailyMail.com agree, saying that major freeways redone in the late 90s that cut through Salt Lake City, including I-15 and I-80, are still a dream to drive on.

The 2002 Olympics also made the state capital – the center of the Mormon religion – one of the best places in the United States for winter sports. 

Millions of dollars were poured into nearby ski areas that were used for events, such as Snowbasin and Park City Mountain Resort. They were fitted with beautiful new lodges, ultra-high speed lifts and gondolas, and huge trail expansions that are still around today.

Good roads and the privilege of shredding snow at world class resorts aren’t enough to make a great city though. People still need jobs and places to live, and as it happens, both of those things are thriving in Salt Lake City.

There are now plenty of high-paying job opportunities in tech and engineering, thanks in part to a huge investment in STEM education over the last 20 years. The city’s tech hub, nicknamed Silicon Slopes, is home to firms like Adobe, Qualtrics, Microsoft, Oracle and many more.

Downtown Salt Lake City has grown over the last twenty years into a modernized area with skyscrapers and public transportation options

Much of the wide-scale development of the city was spurred on by it being chosen to host the 2002 Olympics

Its many ski resorts were upgraded with new lodges, ultra-high speed lifts and gondolas, and huge trail expansions (Pictured: Park City Mountain Resort, which is about 30 miles east of Salt Lake City

Finance is also a huge sector in Salt Lake County, which has 15 of the nation’s 23 industrial banks.

Phil Meyer, a recruiter in the Salt Lake City area, said that aside from some recent layoffs in the tech sector that were mostly ‘AI-driven’, he believes the city’s job market is ‘pretty solid’.

‘A lot of young people come out here that are familiar with the ski resorts in the summer and they stay,’ Meyer told DailyMail.com. ‘I think Salt Lake City has been kind of a hot market, technology wise, for at least the last two or three years.’

And since 2009, when Adobe became the first major tech company to establish a presence in Salt Lake City, homes in the metro area have more than doubled in value, outpacing more well-established cities like Los Angeles and New York. 

To account for its growing, more affluent population, the city has become much more built-up over the last 20 or so years.

Sarah Young, a member of the Salt Lake City Council since July 2023, moved to the city when she was in high school in the late 1990s, so she remembers a time when the city had a fraction of the footprint it has today.

‘When I was in high school I probably could count on my two hands how many tall buildings we had in downtown Salt Lake,’ she told DailyMail.com.

‘Now you go downtown and not only do you see multiple high rises, but you also see more on the horizon that are being built out. And I think that speaks to the fact that there’s people who want to live in Salt Lake City,’ she added.

Pictured: A recent overhead view of Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, which has the flagship temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as its centerpiece

In 1980, Temple Square had hardly any tall buildings except the Mormon Temple itself

The downtown professional sports scene is only growing, with the newly introduced Utah Hockey Club now sharing the Delta Center alongside the Utah Jazz.

Eccles Theater is also a relatively new feature in the city’s downtown, having opened in 2016. The venue has allowed locals to get a chance to see popular Broadway shows such as Phantom of the Opera and Hamilton.

And despite the constant development of the city, locals told DailyMail.com that traffic is still negligible. Most everywhere you’d want to go is within a 15 to 20 minute car ride or less. 

This confluence of factors – a booming real estate market, a humming jobs ecosystem, unrivaled outdoor activities and a growing downtown – has made Salt Lake City an attractive option for many.

And now that it was once again chosen last year to host the Winter Olympics, this time in 2034, locals said they’re excited to see the city grow even more thanks to additional investments.

The city has been on a constant journey of expansion and improvement since it won its bid for the 2002 Olympics in 1995, a time when it had 20 percent fewer residents.

Many say former Utah Governor Michael Leavitt is one of the key architects of the modern-day Salt Lake City, as he was instrumental getting the Olympics to come there.

‘The 17 days of the games are very important. But its what happens in the seven or eight years in advance and what happens in the 10 years after that ultimately make the games a worthwhile experience both economically and culturally,’ Leavitt told CNBC last month.

Then-Utah Governor Michael Leavitt stands at a lectern addressing journalists’ questions about the upcoming Winter Olympics on October 19, 2001

Pictured: A high-speed gondola at Park City Mountain Resort, one of the mountains used for the 2002 Olympics

Pictured: A snowboarder makes their way down a freshly packed trail at Snowbasin Resort, another venue for events at the 2002 Olympics

Six of the 10 venues that would ultimately be used for the Olympics had to be built from scratch, including the Ice Sheet at Ogden and Soldier Hollow, both of which are still used for recreational ice skating and skiing, respectively.

Add on top of that the first line of the brand new Trax light rail system that connected South Salt Lake to Sandy, the city spent upwards of $287 million on infrastructure alone for the 2002 games.

But unlike past Olympic host cities that had to spend big on infrastructure and were left with gigantic debts, the state of Utah was left with a surplus of $163.4million after the games, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.

Not only that, between the years of 1996 and 2003, there was a whopping $6.1billion of economic output attributable to the Olympics. Though, the residual impacts in the form of increased tourism to ski resorts have only added to the profitability.

As this development activity was going on, Leavitt was also working to make the city a prime destination for high-skilled workers.

In 2001, he signed a bill that authorized spending an estimated $40.1million over two decades with the goal of doubling the number of engineering and computer science graduates from Utah’s colleges and universities.

By 2016, graduates in both disciplines more than doubled, while the number of computer science degree holders nearly tripled. Therefore, it is no surprise that more tech firms migrated to Salt Lake City, hoping to scoop up University of Utah talent who wanted to stay local.

Pictured: Adobe’s office building in Lehi, a city just south of Salt Lake City that has become a tech hub in recent years. Adobe set up shop in 2009, and many tech firms followed

Doug Cary, a realtor who has been selling homes in the Salt Lake City area for over 19 years, said the tech boom has fueled the construction of many more two- to three-story townhomes

According to Doug Cary, a realtor who has been selling homes in the Salt Lake City area for over 19 years, the tech boom has fueled the construction of many more two- to three-story townhomes in areas like Lehi, where many of the biggest companies are. 

‘The whole area around Silicon Slopes has developed just an insane amount,’ Cary said. ‘There was so much farmland and so much open space that is now just massive communities of town homes and condos.’

He added that tech workers and other young professionals are increasingly choosing these style of homes. They want to live in a more densely populated area, he said, and they typically don’t want a yard or the various other responsibilities of living in a single family home.

But it appears that the key driver of the condo craze is the fact that they’re simply less expensive. 

A variety of experts told The Salt Lake Tribune last February that townhomes are cheaper to buy and build, making them attractive options for first-time homebuyers and builders alike.

In 2022, there were four times as many building permits granted for condos and town homes in a year than there were in 2013, according to a database from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

Sarah Young, the city councilmember, said the government has taken notice of the affordability crunch and is taking steps to ameliorate the situation.  

‘I think the challenge right now is finding those rental opportunities where it’s not taking over 30 percent of your income,’ Young said. ‘That’s one of the reasons that you’ve seen the city invest in creating new opportunities for that missing middle housing and family-sized units across the city.’

Sarah Young, a city councilmember, said she and her colleagues are focused on affordable housing for residents as home prices continue to appreciate

Richmond Flats, an affordable housing complex with 55 units, was completed in 2023

Busy Traffic in Downtown Salt Lake City. Looking South from State Street and North Temple

In her district, which is southwest of downtown and borders the mountains, there are four affordable housing complexes. Three of them – Liberty Village, Richmond Flats, and Lincoln Towers – have already been completed and have 185 units affordable units combined.

Fairmont Heights, a senior living community, is still in the works. According to the plans, it will have 110 units and will cater to residents making 50 percent or less than the area median income (AMI). 

The city council and the Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) has been offering developers low interest financing as long as they’re willing to at least make some of their units affordable, Young told DailyMail.com.

There’s also been a lot more interest in using steel instead of lumber to build taller buildings, which are generally more profitable for builders.

However, there are many areas in Salt Lake City that are only zoned for 30 or 35-foot-tall buildings. 

Young said the city council is often willing to negotiate and give land approvals to developers who want to go beyond this height as long as they include cheaper apartments in their plan.

‘To come to the council and say, “We want more height because it’s going to generate more return on investment for a building,” that’s not a compelling argument,’ Young said. 

‘But if you’re able to say, “We’re interested in some additional height and we’re willing to include 20 percent of our units at 80 percent AMI or less,” that is something that we as council consider,’ she added.

The city is close to reaching and surpassing its goal of building 2,000 units for people who 31 percent to 80 percent of Salt Lake City’s AMI, which is $122,700 per year in 2025.

It is 1,570 units shy of reaching its 2,000-unit construction goal for residents making 30 percent or less of the AMI, the city’s affordable housing dashboard shows.

As the city works to make housing more equitable, Cary insists there is still plenty of appetite for pricier single family homes outside the city center (Pictured: A $2.6million mansion Cary currently has under contract in Park City)

This year, Cary also sold this $378,000 ranch in suburban Plain City, about 50 minutes north of Salt Lake City

Another home among Cary’s portfolio of home sales this year is this $875,000 property in Kaysville, just 25 minutes from downtown

Cary is currently working to sell this six-bedroom, four bath home in Centerville, only a 20 minute drive from downtown. It’s listed for just under $750,000

As the city works to make housing more equitable, Cary insists there is still plenty of appetite for pricier single family homes outside the city center.

‘If a house is priced to the market, like priced based on what things have been selling for, it’s going to sell within a couple weeks,’ he said. ‘If somebody wants to choose to price it over what recent sales have been. It’s going to sit quite a bit longer, and it probably won’t sell.’

By comparison, the median home in Los Angeles, where Cary says many of his clients are coming from, stays on the market for over two months, according to Redfin.

So far this year, his clients haven’t fit any particular mold. One moved from Florida to Salt Lake City for a job offer and to avoid future hurricanes. Two of his customers were from California, with one buying a second home and another fleeing the Bay Area.

His clients also range in age, with ‘quite a few’ of them being in their early to late twenties.

The homes he has sold this year or remain under contract range from a $378,000 ranch in suburban Plain City to a $2.6million mansion in Park City.

His in-betweeners include a property in Syracuse that sold for $515,000, and a home with a three-car garage in Kaysville that went for $875,000.

Right now, Cary is working to sell a six-bedroom, four bath home in Centerville, which is about a 20-minute drive from the city.

The nearly 4,000 square-foot property recently had to drop its price by $35,000 down to a total of just under $750,000.

Indoor garages are huge selling feature for homes, Cary said, so residents can avoid the hassle of digging their car out of the snow. Other positives are finished basements and the best view possible of the surrounding Wasatch Mountains.

A view of the towering Wasatch Mountain Range is common for most homes, but the better the view, the better it is as a selling point, Cary said

Cary also said that many prospective buyers ask him about what it’s like to live in Salt Lake City given the strong presence of the Mormon Church

Cary said people thinking of moving to Utah frequently ask him about the Mormon church, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Typically referred to simply as LDS, the church wields a lot of power in Utah, both culturally and politically.

It owns a newspaper, Deseret News, and a television station, KSL-TV. The vast majority of state legislators are Mormon, and all of the state’s members of Congress are also followers of the LDS church.

Since Mormons are taught to abstain from alcohol, for example, Utah’s liquor laws have generally been much stricter than the rest of the country.

The blood alcohol content limit is 0.05% in Utah, the lowest in the nation. Restaurants and bars can also only sell you one beer or cocktail at a time.

About 42 percent of Salt Lake City residents identify as Mormons, and Cary, who is an LDS member himself, says it’s much lower than that in certain areas.

‘The response I get from people is that they’re the friendliest group of people, and the friendliest neighbors you can have,’ he said.

Another thing to consider before moving to Salt Lake City is the air quality. The area’s atypical geography leads to periodic temperatures inversions in the winter that traps cold air underneath a layer of warm air. This essentially holds in pollution particles from cars and other sources right over the Salt Lake Valley.

‘I’ve definitely had people move to move out of the area, or move to more of a mountain town because of that,’ Cary said. ‘Usually it’s elderly people that have health issues.’

There’s no doubt that Salt Lake City is on the ascent, especially with the 2034 Winter Games on the way

Councilmember Young told DailyMail.com that’s she particularly excited about ongoing plans to expand Trax, the light-rail system that was first introduced for the 2002 Games

There’s no doubt that Salt Lake City is on the ascent, especially with the 2034 Winter Games on the way. It’s estimated that this event alone will contribute $6.6billion to the city’s economy.

Salt Lakers view the Olympics as a bulwark against what’s going on economically at the national level. 

President Donald Trump’s tariffs in particular have sent the entire country see-sawing as the stock market tries to appropriately react to the administration’s minute-by-minute pronouncements on trade policy. 

‘What we do expect is, no matter what happens with the national economy, we know that Utah over the next 10 years will be better than the average, just because of the money being dumped here for the Olympics,’ Cary said.

Councilmember Young told DailyMail.com that’s she particularly excited about ongoing plans to expand Trax, the light-rail system that was first introduced for the 2002 Games.

While the system goes all the way from Ogden to Provo and has plenty of stops in between, Young said residents often complain they have to wait more than 15 because there aren’t enough tracks and train cars.

There are also plans to add a new orange line that would connect the University of Utah directly to the airport.

‘I think a lot of us are interested in the bigger, long-term plan in terms of some of the potential for railway and high speed infrastructure that would link us up to Boise and then down to Las Vegas,’ she said, adding this type of expansion would require collaboration with the state.