From the freeway, the site still looks like a graded plateau with a few cranes. From the press releases, it looks like a downtown. Both are true, and the gap between them is the whole story for anyone who lives in Draper right now.
On June 29, 2026, shovels went into the ground on Phase One of The Point, the 600-acre state redevelopment on the former Utah State Prison land. The event drew Governor Spencer Cox, mayors, and a small army of developers. What it did not do was change what you see when you drive south on I-15 tomorrow morning. The purpose of this guide is to separate the ceremony from the calendar, so residents already living in Draper know which pieces of the district will meaningfully alter a Wednesday evening in the next twelve months, and which pieces belong to 2029 and beyond.
What actually broke ground on June 29
Phase One is a 104-acre downtown core carved out of the broader 600-acre site. It is being delivered by The Point Partners, a joint venture of Lincoln Property Company, Colmena Group, and Wadsworth Development Group, under the oversight of the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, which retains ownership of the land on behalf of the state. The Utah Legislature has committed $165 million to backbone infrastructure. The private funding commitment from the development team is $2.3 billion.
The immediate Phase One package includes a 5,000-seat multi-purpose venue now named the Mountain America Event Center under a multi-year naming rights deal with Oak View Group and Mountain America Credit Union, a 363-unit multifamily building with roughly 42,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, structured parking, and a 2,000-foot walkable street called The Promenade. Broader board-level planning presented earlier this year to the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority described six initial projects totaling 408 market-rate units, 400 affordable units delivered in partnership with Alta Bay Capital, a 175-room hotel, and about 111,000 square feet of retail across the first wave.
"You don't have to get in your car and head to Salt Lake," Mike Ambre, executive director of The Point, told Building Salt Lake at the groundbreaking, describing the district's work-live-play thesis.
The thesis is credible. The timing is where residents need to slow down.
The timeline residents should actually keep in their head
Robert Booth, vice president of development at Wadsworth, laid out delivery windows at the March 2026 POMSLA board meeting. Reorganized around what a Draper homeowner can expect to actually see:
| Project | Goes vertical | Expected delivery | What it changes for a resident |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mountain America Event Center | Late 2026 | Roughly 24 months from vertical start | First real destination on-site; concerts and mid-size events |
| The Promenade street work | Spring/summer 2026 | Rolling into 2027 | Sidewalks, streetscape, curb work visible from I-15 |
| Convergence Hall (education) | December 2026 | Two to three years out | University presence anchors the district's daytime population |
| Parcel H3A mixed-use | Late 2026 | 24 to 26 months | First apartments and ground-floor retail |
| Parcel H5B hotel | Later in the cycle | Roughly 18 months from vertical start | 175-room hotel adds overnight demand |
| Parcel H5A mixed-use tower | Late 2026 start | 30 to 36 months, so early 2029 | Largest building; anchors the skyline |
| University of Utah Health campus | Land purchase of about 46 acres in motion | Multi-year build after design | Regional health destination adjacent to Phase One |
| River District for-sale homes | Developer selection underway after a July 16, 2026 pre-proposal meeting | Multi-year delivery | 800 to 900 owner-occupied homes, mostly townhome and condo |
Four buildings are expected to go vertical over the next twelve months. Only one of them, the event center, is likely to be occupiable before the end of 2028. That is the number worth internalizing.
The one building you will see rising this year
The Mountain America Event Center is the piece that changes the near-term skyline. At 5,000 seats it is the largest multi-purpose venue in the South Salt Lake Valley, and Oak View Group, which operates arenas across the country, will handle booking and hospitality. For a resident, the practical consequence is a mid-size concert and event venue roughly ten minutes from the Corner Canyon trailheads, which today require a drive to Salt Lake City, West Valley, or Sandy to match.
Concert traffic and event parking are the second-order effect. The venue sits east of I-15 near Bangerter, and the same on-ramps you use to reach the Living Planet Aquarium or to head north toward Sandy will absorb event nights once the building opens. Watch for POMSLA's traffic and access studies as construction documents finalize this fall.
What is not on this year's calendar
Most of the district's marquee pieces are further out than the coverage suggests. The 363-unit apartment building on Parcel H3A is a two-year construction. Parcel H5A, the largest tower in the first wave, is a two-and-a-half to three-year build, which pushes its opening into early 2029 on the developer's own estimate. The University of Utah Health campus on the adjacent 46 acres is in the acquisition and design phase, not the construction phase.
The River District, which is the section of The Point that will most directly affect Draper's for-sale housing market, is still selecting developers. A mandatory pre-proposal meeting for interested builders took place July 16, 2026, and the plan calls for roughly 800 to 900 owner-occupied homes across single-family, townhome, and condominium formats on about 50 acres. Even under an aggressive timeline, the first of those homes would not close until well after 2027.
How this reshapes your existing Draper map
The current version of an evening in Draper does not run through The Point yet. It runs through a set of places residents already know, and understanding where the new district plugs in matters more than the ribbon-cutting photography.
- Corner Canyon. The trail system remains the neighborhood's anchor recreation asset, with roughly 160 mapped trails, Ghost Falls, the Bear Canyon Suspension Bridge, and the Draper City Corner Canyon Half Marathon set for September 19, 2026. The Point is a valley-floor district. It complements the foothills; it does not replace them. The Corner Canyon Trails Foundation's Switchback Shindig on October 18 at Siempre is still the community fundraiser tied to the trails.
- Loveland Living Planet Aquarium. Open in Draper since March 2014 and past ten million visitors, the aquarium already trains residents to associate the east side of I-15 near 123rd South with a family destination. The Point extends that footprint south with a very different set of uses.
- The existing dining map. For evenings out, Cultivate Craft Kitchen, Sauce Boss Southern Kitchen, Cliff Dining Pub, di Napoli, Spitz on 12300 South, Gourmandise at 725 East 12300 South, Pirate O's Gourmet Market, and Les Barbecue Sandwiches at 12059 South State remain the practical rotation. The Promenade's retail leasing is still a pipeline, not a menu.
The Point does not compete with any of these. It stitches a new node onto the existing map, and that node is a two- to three-year build in most of its important parts.
What to watch between now and December
If you want a short list of dates that will actually tell you whether The Point is on schedule, watch these:
- Construction documents for the event center clearing state entitlements and permitting this fall. Booth described this as the gating step for vertical work.
- The December 2026 groundbreaking on Convergence Hall, the multi-university education building Ambre confirmed to Building Salt Lake. That is the second visible vertical project.
- Developer selection in the River District following the July 16 pre-proposal meeting. The winning team will set the tone for the for-sale product coming into Draper's future inventory.
- POMSLA board meeting minutes, which have been the most reliable source for schedule slips and scope adjustments so far. The March 2026 meeting is where the six-project first wave was quantified for the public.
Everything else is rendering, marketing, or a long-range promise.
A note for the homeowner already here
For residents whose houses sit in the Suncrest, SunCrest bench, South Mountain, or east-of-Highland pockets, the honest read is that The Point in 2026 is more construction fence than downtown. The value it eventually adds, an event center within ten minutes, a walkable retail street, a hospital campus, and a substantial supply of new for-sale homes in the River District, is real. It is also mostly a 2028 and 2029 story. The next twelve months will be dust, dirt, and one arena rising out of the ground.
That gap between the press narrative and the driveway view is where sellers occasionally overprice on speculation and buyers occasionally underprice on skepticism. If you are thinking about the timing of a move, either into the neighborhood or out of it, the point is not whether The Point is coming. It is coming. The point is when each piece lands, and how your own street connects to that calendar.
If you would like a candid conversation about what The Point's phasing means for your specific block, or a current valuation on your Draper home, the Secrist Team is available. Get a Free Home Valuation and we will walk you through the numbers that actually matter for your address.
