- The circa-1960 New Formalist building joined the National Register in 2014 as a contributing property in the South Temple Historic District
- Prior tenant: the Drug Enforcement Administration
- Reporting date is August 24; the building opened and SHPO approved in June 2026
Key Takeaways
- Woodbury converted twenty apartments and built one hundred sixty-one - the historic building bought the credit, and the credit bought the project
- If a conversion pro forma in a secondary market pencils without a stacked federal-plus-state credit, check the assumptions again
- Where the credit is load-bearing, preservation review governs scope and scope governs the credit
Building Salt Lake; Utah State Historic Preservation Office; Woodbury Corporation — August 24, 2026 · The Signal · Read the unit split again. Twenty units came out of the office building. One hundred sixty-one came out of new construction on the same parcel. · That ratio is the entire economics of secondary-market conversion. The historic structure was not the asset — it was the qualifying condition. Preserving it unlocked a stacked 40% credit against qualified rehabilitation expenditures, and the credit is what made the site work. The revenue came from the tower behind it. · The five-and-a-half-year SHPO timeline is the cost nobody underwrites. From late 2020 to June 2026, the design had to satisfy preservation review on both the existing building and its addition. That is carry, that is contingency, and that is a scope you cannot value-engineer freely once the credit is the basis of the return. · Salt Lake also matters here. Conversion arithmetic in Manhattan or Chicago runs on scale and rent spreads that do not exist on South Temple. In a market with $1,299 starting rents, the subsidy is not an enhancement to returns. It is the return. · Implications · If a conversion pro forma in a secondary market pencils without a stacked federal-plus-state credit, check the assumptions again. And if the credit is load-bearing, treat design flexibility as a risk line: preservation review governs the scope, and the scope governs the credit. · Woodbury converted twenty apartments and built one hundred sixty-one — the historic building bought the credit, and the credit bought the project. · Building Salt Lake, IBM Built it as an Office Building. Now it's Been Turned Into Apartments, August 24, 2026 - https://buildingsaltlake.com/woodbury-wraps-up-conversion-of-ibm-building-from-office-to-class-a-apartments/ · Woodbury Corporation, Historic IBM Building Project Awarded State & Federal Historic Tax Credits - https://woodburycorp.com/news/historic-ibm-building-project-awarded-state-federal-historic-tax-credits/ · Utah Business, Woodbury Corporation opens The Source on South Temple in Downtown Salt Lake City, July 6, 2026 - https://www.utahbusiness.com/press-releases/2026/07/06/woodbury-corporation-the-source-south-temple-downtown-salt-lake-city/
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