Hidden
Gem
Downtown Salt Lake City · The Offices at Gateway
The Brief
The Gateway was undergoing a near-complete transformation — from a skeleton of a shopping mall, often called a ghost town, into a destination for entertainment, eating, living, and work.
Vestar, leading the redevelopment, had decided The Gateway would no longer be a shopping mall. A major piece of the plan was converting empty storefronts and abandoned office towers into workspace for tech firms. To draw the kind of tenants they wanted — the kind who tour with checkboxes — every commercial-building amenity expectation had to be met.
That meant the rooftop. A small rooftop, a tight retrofit budget, and structural rules that ruled out major waterproofing work or heavy penetrations.
The brief: turn 5,000 square feet of overlooked roof into the reason a tech firm signs the lease.
Standout Features
Our Approach
On-structure outdoor amenities are complex enough on their own. Building over an existing structure dials the complexity higher. The team has to know multiple rooftop scenarios cold — otherwise, things don’t come together right.
The space had to feel lush and green — somewhere employees would actually want to step outside and recharge. Our rooftop discipline came in clutch resolving the structural integrity of the deck and the irrigation + drainage demands of the planters.
The unique narrow L shape was the design opportunity. We arranged the planters to form a continuous green backdrop at the corner of the L, so each leg of the deck had visual access to plantings. We then thought through the planter layout to minimize the penetrations needed for irrigation and drainage. The result was a surprisingly green area at significantly less expense.
As workplace design evolved, attractive amenities became the expectation for companies competing for top talent. A rich workplace experience leads to higher retention — which is what tenants are buying when they sign the lease.
We collaborated with the diverse creative studio team at WOW Atelier to make the patio space inseparable from their interior amenities. Their interior. Our exterior. One idea.
What if your retrofit
landed the WeWork-class tenant?
Hidden Gem proved that small outdoor moves — done right — can land the kind of tenant who’d normally tour past your building. The constraint isn’t budget. It’s thinking.
Imagine This for Your Building →When we were tasked with designing a seamless interior/exterior space that was cutty, urban, and reminiscent of a secret pocket park you might stumble upon in a new city, we knew we had to collaborate with Loft Six Four. No one does rooftop space better. Full stop
Greg Walker WOW Atelier
Results
Hidden Gem is exactly what its name describes — an extremely outstanding outdoor space, relatively unknown because of its location as a private rooftop patio connecting three office towers in downtown Salt Lake City.
The space is a small but important part of a tens-of-millions-of-dollars investment to recover The Gateway. It’s now the only large outdoor office patio amenity in Salt Lake City’s Central Business District — a fine example of an under-utilized space turned into a brand asset.
Tenants use it for work, lunch, events, and casual meetings. It became a daily reason to stay at the lease end — and a leasing pitch for the next tenant.
When precision design replaces big spending, the building gets a second life — without losing the first one to a teardown.
“We’re poised to be the urban extension of Silicon Slopes. We have a unique opportunity where we’re going to bring on large blocks of creative workspace.”
Jenny Cushing — Vestar
Your project deserves
this level of thinking.
Whether you’re a developer, architect, or builder — if your outdoor space needs to define the project, we should talk.