DAVID WOLFSON THE GREAT SALTAIR. LOL
City Beat - September 25, 2003
Saltair Noir
Salt Lake County officials negotiate with Saltair owner over building-code breaches.
by Kristy Davis
Saltair gleams like a desert mirage: a Russian-style, gold-domed castle out in the middle of nowhere next to a freaky, stinky, brine shrimp-infested lake locals tend to ignore. The concert venue thrives with bands like Primus, Slayer and Deftones while teens and 20-somethings cram the 3,200-occupancy, warehouse-style, red-and-indigo painted ballroom—standing room only.
The famed venue has spawned criticism of late. On Monday, Sept. 22, in a closed-door meeting, Salt Lake County officials socked Saltair owner David Wolfson with an ultimatum: Force Saltair into compliance with Salt Lake County building, health and fire codes, or padlock the door and relinquish the key. Wolfson, Saltair owner since 1999, said he’s kissed almost $20,000 goodbye in the last 30 days to fend off county dogs. Don’t blame Saltair, Wolfson and his attorney asserted, for the state’s poorly engineered sewage system.
According to Mike Barrett, assistant building official for Salt Lake County, Saltair allegedly violates a host of building codes. The plumbing and sewage systems suck. Building doors lack stops, a condition that causes doors to swing open too far, blocking exit paths. Saltair also disregards electrical code. As is common in roadhouses, band technicians often access a venue’s power supply. Experienced, but seldom-licensed band roadies manipulate electrical cables, lighting instruments and power connections, the misapplication of which could set Saltair ablaze. No designated parking place awaits fire trucks during events.
“This has been an ongoing issue for Saltair and the county for years. We’ve finally said, ‘You’ve gotta get this place safe and sanitary,’” Barrett said. “We’ve been trying our best to work with them to keep them able to have their events and so forth. [But] they need to bring things into compliance. And we’ve given them enough time to do that,” he said.
“We’ve resolved the issue of restroom facilities,” countered Wolfson. “We’d had an issue with that before. We had to fix it and we did. We’ve had some issues with the health department previously. For the last concert, we had to put the Porta-Potties out there in case there was some trouble with the facilities. We put in a new sprinkler system not that long ago. It’s been refurbished many times. We’ve had a lot of work done over the years. It’s up to code.”
Not yet, according to the county, but Wolfson is running as fast as he can, preparing for upcoming concerts. By his own calculation, Wolfson paid more than $12,000 to fix Saltair’s sewer system; junked a burned-out paddleboat near the venue’s façade, and relocated graffiti-smeared railroad cars by crane.
Wolfson referred questions about specific code violations to his attorney, Pat Shea, who compared Saltair’s wrangle with the county to a wrestling match.
“It’s like big-time wrestling,” Shea said. “It’s a free-for-all for as many [government] agencies as possible. It’s more entertaining [and] action-packed than a solitary fight.”
Shea said concertgoers will have drinking water, even though plumbing problems may require a long-term overhaul. Saltair’s owner is working with county and state agencies to resolve past electrical jury-rigging. Shea admitted that he didn’t know whether Saltair’s doors facilitate smooth exit.
“The code violations have been corrected. The concerts should go on, and the state should assume the responsibility for correcting the [sewage] engineering problem,” Shea said. Anticipating major tourist action, Utah developers engineered the sewage system near the Great Salt Lake to accommodate too many people, according to Shea. The problem lies with faulty engineering in the lines and a broken sewage pump that the state owns.
Neither Wolfson nor Shea copped to the conspiracy theory of someone targeting Saltair for personal reasons, though recent tourist complaints to the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau made KSL news when the bureau threatened Saltair’s membership. In e-mailed correspondence, Jason Mathis, bureau communications director, wrote: “A bigger question (to me anyway) is who is trying to cause so many problems for the new owners of Saltair and why? It seems like every media outlet in town got a copy of [the complaints], implying that this is an actual story.”
A visit to Saltair on the Thursday prior to the Sept. 22 meeting revealed a nearly full Porta-Potty located near the entrance. Inside, stanchions blocked the upper level of Saltair with signs warning off visitors. Aside from a few spiderwebs, a gift-shop clerk penning a crossword puzzle, and saltwater taffy for sale, no glaring danger threatened an elderly-couple-from-Florida’s day. But a warehouse packed with writhing, concert-fevered youths attempting to exit a burning building might be another story.
Due to the deaths of 21 people who stampeded for the door to escape a burning Chicago nightclub in February, Barrett said, county officials take regulations seriously. “People were trampled alive, burned and killed,” he said. “We don’t want a catastrophe.”
It wouldn’t be the first catastrophe for Saltair. Before Saltair achieved cult status—even via a cameo in the 1962 film noir classic Carnival of Souls—for outrageous concerts and roadhouse raves, multiple natural disasters plagued the resort’s now-110 years of existence. Three fires, a flood and extreme winds resulted in Saltair’s total reconstruction three times since it opened in 1893 as the “Coney Island of the West.”
But good times prevailed, as locals reminisce about Saltair’s happenin’ days.
“I have to sit here all day long and listen to [tourists’] stories about when they were 5 [years old] and their father took them to Saltair,” said Serena Hakanson, who works in the gift shop of the Great Salt Lake Marina. Visitors fondly recall the “roaring” 1920s and ’30s, when a railroad connected Salt Lake City with Saltair attractions, including swimming, a roller coaster, dancing to East Coast “big bands,” bicycle races and hot air balloons.
As for Saltair’s mud wrestling match, Wolfson did not return phone calls after the meeting, but Barrett said county officials wax optimistic that the concerts will go on. According to Barrett, the state will have a third-party engineer re-evaluate the sewage system, negotiating any necessary modifications with Wolfson. Other resolutions will require ongoing inspections and meetings.
Whether concertgoers find that Saltair is much the same, or $20,000 better, at least the toilets will flush.
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