The old Utah State Prison site in Draper will soon look a lot different. By the summer of 2026, what is now a 600-acre dirt lot will have critical infrastructure like roads, parks and trails ready for the next phase of redevelopment.
“We have a completely new canvas where we can build what we want and what Utahns want for this space,” said Rep. Jordan Teuscher, co-chair of The Point of the Mountain State Land Authority board.
The Point is billed as “Utah’s Innovation Community” that combines housing with amenities, transit and economic growth.
Phase one encompasses approximately 100 acres and will boast restaurants, shopping, entertainment, open space and roughly 3,000 multi-family housing units. State and private sector leaders broke ground on that phase on Dec. 17.
“You can imagine, as you look out here in the future, seeing shops, cafes, office buildings that will line that boulevard incorporating a human-centered design that creates an impactful experience and fosters a sense of place,” Teuscher said.
The development is on state-owned land and elected officials who attended the groundbreaking ceremony have a vested interest in the final outcome. Speaker of the House Mike Schultz expects the project to pay dividends for generations.
“The Point gives us the best of both worlds,” he said. “The opportunity for us to build a site while leveraging the benefits of private sector competition, technological innovation and capital investment.”
For the planned businesses and entrepreneurs at The Point to succeed, experts say there needs to be housing — and a lot of it — not too far away.
Speaking at a housing workshop put on by Gov. Spencer Cox and the Western Governors Association later in the day, National Association of Home Builders Director of State and Local Government Affairs Bailey Thompson said it will be critical for future projects to have amenities nearby and the ability for residents to “stay in the communities that they want to be in.”
“To create those 15-minute neighborhoods with those main streets, density is going to be necessary to support those businesses and to make it so people can live where they want to live,” she said.
Construction at The Point could start late next year.
Although plans for the remaining 500 acres have not been made public, Cox said the opportunity was there for the project to provide “thousands of new housing units to help address our housing shortage, including much-needed affordable housing.”
The project could also be an indicator of how state leaders plan to approach the issue of housing affordability in the years to come as lawmakers have slowly chipped away at the issue.
For Cox’s part, he sees a huge upside to projects like The Point contributing to quality of life issues like housing affordability in the future.
“This is one of those projects that says that we are not going to be the most selfish generation in history, that we actually are going to give back and make this place better than we found it,” he said.
It’s also a signal for how the state plans to prioritize business innovation along the Wasatch Front as communities like the Silicon Slopes continue to attract businesses and employees to the state.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Why is a state involved in a development project, why not just sell it off, turn it over to the free market and let them build what the state actually needs?’” Teuscher said. “And the answer is, because of this innovation district.”
