The Point Draper
Announced, under construction and finished, kept visibly apart
The Point, and the difference between built and drawn.
The Utah State Prison left in 2022, the demolition finished in 2023, the pipes went in through 2025 and the first buildings broke ground on 29 June 2026. Everything else you have read about this site, from the housing totals to the job projections to the air taxis, is published programme rather than fabric. Here is which is which, with a date on each.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Draper is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
Six hundred acres, and a hard line down the middle of the story.
For seventy years the thing everyone in Utah knew about Draper was the prison at the Point of the Mountain. That chapter is closed in the most literal sense. The Utah State Prison moved to its replacement west of Salt Lake City in July 2022, demolition followed, and the last guard tower came down in August 2023. What is left is a little over 600 acres of flat, serviced, state owned land sitting against an interstate, which is close to the rarest thing in this valley.
The state did not sell it to a master developer. It created the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority to hold and direct it, then contracted the first phase to a private venture, and that structure is worth understanding because it is why the published plans are so detailed and so long dated. A land authority answers to the legislature rather than to a quarterly return, and it publishes a vision that runs decades out.
Which brings us to the only rule that matters on this page. An enormous amount of what circulates about The Point is programme rather than fabric: unit counts, square footages, job numbers and trail spines that exist in a document. Some of it is now real. Site infrastructure went in through 2025 and vertical construction on the first buildings started on 29 June 2026. The rest is a plan with a date on it, and the sections below keep the two apart.
The Point by the numbers
600+ acres
of former state prison ground
104 acres
in the first downtown district
29 June 2026
the day vertical construction began
2028
the stated first openings
What is finished
The unglamorous half is the half that is actually done.
Nothing on this list photographs well and all of it had to happen first. A 600 acre site that spent seventy years as a secure institution does not have the pipes, the drainage or the street grid that a district needs, and installing them is most of what the project has physically achieved so far.
| What | When | Status |
|---|---|---|
| The prison relocated to its replacement site | July 2022 | Complete |
| Demolition of the prison, including the last guard tower | August 2023 | Complete, with the historic chapel preserved and most materials recycled |
| Phase one agreement signed with a private development venture | Autumn 2023 | Complete |
| Horizontal groundbreaking on site infrastructure | 17 December 2024 | Complete |
| Utilities, drainage and road base across the first district | Through 2025 | Complete |
| Vertical groundbreaking on the first buildings | 29 June 2026 | Complete, construction now live |
Dates as published by the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority and in the groundbreaking announcements of December 2024 and June 2026, checked 8 August 2026. Confirm current status at thepointutah.org, which publishes its own news feed and is the only source that speaks for the project.
The recycling detail is worth a sentence because it tells you something about how the site was handled. The great majority of the prison's materials were recovered rather than landfilled, and the institution's chapel was preserved rather than levelled with everything else. On a project this size those are small decisions, and small decisions are usually a better guide to how a body operates than its published vision is.
The other thing the infrastructure phase bought is credibility. A great many announced districts in the mountain west never get past the rendering, and the difference is almost always whether anybody spent real money on pipes. Here, 165 million dollars of Utah Legislature infrastructure money went into the ground before a single building was framed, which is the strongest single argument that this one is not vapour.
What is going up now
Four buildings and a street, on 104 of the 600 acres.
On 29 June 2026 the development venture broke ground on the first vertical construction, with the governor present, on a district of 104 acres described as the downtown core of the wider site. That is the number to hold on to. The first phase is not the 600 acres and it is not the whole vision; it is a defined downtown of roughly a sixth of the ground, and it is the part with contractors on it.
The anchor is an arena. The Mountain America Event Center is a 5,000 seat venue, operated by Oak View Group under a multi year naming rights agreement with Mountain America Credit Union, and it has been described as the largest of its kind in the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. Around it, a 2,000 foot walkable street called The Promenade is intended to be the district's social spine, and a residential building called Chroma brings 363 homes with about 42,000 square feet of ground floor retail beneath them.
Coverage of the groundbreaking named two more buildings in the first tranche: an education building called Convergence Hall, reported as breaking ground in December 2026, and an office building called Amber at around 60,000 square feet with a parking structure. The project team's stated expectation was four buildings within twelve months of the June groundbreaking, and first buildings opening in 2028.
Separately, a University of Utah Health campus of about 45.8 acres has been announced adjacent to the site as the anchor of a health innovation district. That is a neighbouring commitment rather than a building inside the 104 acres, and it belongs in this section only because it is the strongest signal so far about what kind of employment the wider site is chasing.
There are two venues called the Mountain America Event Center, and only one of them exists. The arena described above is under construction and has no opening date published. The other one, a 15,000 square foot events venue holding up to 2,000 guests, opened inside the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium's new building in February 2026 and is a short drive away in the same city. The same credit union holds naming rights on both, from two unrelated organisations. Until the arena opens, every ticket under that name is for the aquarium.
What is still a document
The numbers everybody quotes are the ones that are not built.
This is the section most coverage of The Point skips, and it is the one that matters most to anybody making a decision on the strength of the project. Everything below is published programme. None of it is fabric, several of the figures have already been revised once, and treating any of it as a commitment would be a mistake.
| The published figure | What it actually is | How much weight to give it |
|---|---|---|
| Roughly 2.3 billion dollars of private investment | A funding commitment across the first phase, not money already spent | Real, and a good measure of intent rather than of delivery |
| Housing counts in the thousands, including several hundred income restricted | Phase programme. The published totals have been stated differently at different points | Directional. The 363 unit building now under construction is the concrete part |
| Office and retail square footage across the wider site | Programme, dependent on tenants who are not yet named | Low weight until leases are announced |
| Job and economic output projections stretching to 2048 | Economic modelling commissioned to support the case for the project | Treat as advocacy arithmetic, not forecast |
| A paved trail spine linking the valley parkway to the eastern foothills | A published plan of roughly 1.4 miles | Plausible and useful if delivered; not there yet |
| Vertiports, air taxis and drone delivery | A feasibility study commissioned in 2024 | A study. Nothing more, and it should not be quoted as a plan |
| Full realisation of phase one | Described by the project team as roughly a fifteen year build | The single most honest number on this list |
Figures as published by the project and reported at the December 2024 and June 2026 groundbreakings, checked 8 August 2026. Programme numbers on a project of this length are revised as tenants, funding and market conditions change, and several of these already have been. Take the current position from thepointutah.org.
One hundred and sixty five million dollars of pipe is a fact. Twenty three thousand jobs is a model.
The structure
A state land authority is not a property developer.
The land is held and directed by the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, a body created by the legislature specifically for this site. That is unusual and it changes the character of the project in ways that are easy to miss. A private master developer optimises for return within a financing window. A land authority is answerable to a legislature, holds ground it cannot simply flip, and can therefore commit to public realm and to a build horizon that no private balance sheet would tolerate.
Delivery of the first phase sits with a private venture, The Point Partners, bringing together Lincoln Property Company, Colmena Group and Wadsworth Development Group. The authority's executive director is Mike Ambre, named in October 2024 after his predecessor left for Rio Tinto Kennecott. So there are two organisations to keep straight: one owns the ground and sets the terms, the other builds the buildings.
For a resident this split has one practical consequence. Questions about what will be built, on what timetable and to what standard are authority questions, and the authority publishes. Questions about a specific building, a specific lease or a specific opening date are developer questions, and developers announce when it suits them. A great deal of confusion about this project comes from asking one of them a question that belongs to the other.
It also means the ordinary lever a resident has over development, which is a city council, only partly applies here. This is state land under a state authority sitting inside a city boundary, which is a genuinely different arrangement from the growth debates happening a few miles in any direction, and it is worth understanding before assuming a municipal process will decide something.
The honest read
A long position on the south end of a valley.
This is the part a buyer actually needs, and it is short because the answer is not complicated once the built and the announced are separated properly.
The Point is real, funded at the infrastructure level, under construction at the building level, and years away from changing an ordinary weekday. Nothing about it is speculative in the sense that it might not happen. Everything about it is speculative in the sense that its shape, its tenants and its pace will all differ from the current drawings, because that is what happens to a fifteen year programme.
The predictable effects arrive in an order. Construction traffic first, and that is already here. Then jobs, as the office and health ground fills. Then residents, from 2028 at the earliest, and then the retail and entertainment that follows residents. Density and road pressure track that sequence rather than arriving with the announcements. The western and southern parts of the city feel each stage first.
The transport question is the one that decides how well this lands, and it is unresolved. A light rail line between Draper and Lehi is the preferred alternative on paper and is not funded. Commuter rail capacity through the gap is a separate programme on its own timetable. Both are covered on the commute page, which is where the corridor arithmetic belongs.
Can you go and see it
Not really, and that is the most useful thing on this page.
There is nothing to visit. The Point is an active construction site with no visitor centre, no public plaza and no attraction, and it will stay that way until buildings open. Anybody planning a trip here on the strength of the coverage will find fencing, plant and a lot of graded dirt. That is not a criticism of the project; it is simply what the middle of a build looks like.
What you can do is read the ground. Driving the frontage roads around the site tells you more in ten minutes about scale and about how traffic will eventually move than any rendering does, and the difference between the graded, serviced portion and the untouched remainder is visible from a car. If you are weighing an address in the southern half of the city, that drive is worth doing once.
When the first buildings open, this changes completely and quickly. An arena of 5,000 seats generates event traffic on a schedule, and a walkable street with retail beneath housing generates the ordinary kind. Both of those are things a nearby address feels. Until then, the useful destinations in this city are the ones on the ranked list, all of which are open today.
Do not enter the site, and do not trust a map application about it. This is a live construction area under a state land authority, with plant movements and unfinished road base, and the streets shown across it by mapping applications are in various states of existing. Treat every route through the site as unavailable until the district opens, and use the surrounding arterial roads. The same applies to any listing or advertisement that describes an address as being at The Point today.
Keep reading
More of Draper on The Local.
Things to do
The top 8, ranked
A canyon the city bought, an aquarium wing that opened this year, and a free jump park.
Read the guideThe aquarium
Loveland Living Planet Aquarium
The building roughly doubled in February 2026, and a U2 stage stands outside it.
Read the guideThe canyon
Corner Canyon and its rules
One way climbs, one way descents, Class 1 e-bikes only, and no dogs above the line.
Read the guideThe cycle park
The Draper Cycle Park
Four jump lines, three pump tracks and a cyclocross flyover, and none of it costs anything.
Read the guideMoving here
The Point of the Mountain commute
Two railheads, one pinch in the mountains, and a light rail line approved but unfunded.
Read the guideThe companion
Draper, the whole picture
The canyon, the aquarium, the cycle park, The Point and the commute, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The Point, answered.
The redevelopment of a little over 600 acres of state owned land at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley, on the site of the former Utah State Prison. It is held and directed by the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, a body the legislature created for this specific site, with the first phase delivered by a private venture. It is intended to become a mixed use district of housing, offices, retail, entertainment and public realm over several decades.
The site is cleared and serviced, and the first buildings are under construction. The prison relocated in July 2022 and demolition finished in 2023. Site infrastructure, meaning utilities, drainage and road base, went in through 2025 following a groundbreaking in December 2024. Vertical construction on the first buildings began on 29 June 2026 across a 104 acre district. No building has opened, and first openings are stated as 2028.
An arena, a street and a residential building, with two more buildings named in the same tranche. The Mountain America Event Center is a 5,000 seat venue operated by Oak View Group. The Promenade is a 2,000 foot walkable street intended as the district's social spine. Chroma is a 363 unit residential building with about 42,000 square feet of ground floor retail. Coverage also named Convergence Hall, an education building, and an office building called Amber.
Two figures are published and they are different things. The Utah Legislature committed 165 million dollars of infrastructure investment, which is money that has been spent putting services into the ground. The Point Partners committed 2.3 billion dollars of private funding to the first phase, which is a commitment across a multi year programme rather than money already deployed. Neither figure covers the wider 600 acres beyond the first phase.
The project team has described full realisation of phase one alone as roughly a fifteen year build, which is the most honest number published about the timetable. First buildings are stated as opening in 2028. The remaining acreage beyond the first 104 acre district has no published completion horizon at all, and on a project of this length the schedule will move. Verify the current position at thepointutah.org rather than in any article, including this one.
Not yet. It is an active construction site with no visitor centre, no public plaza and no attraction, and mapping applications show streets across it that are in various states of existing. There is nothing to see beyond plant, fencing and graded ground. Driving the surrounding arterial roads gives a useful sense of scale if you are weighing an address nearby, but the site itself is not open and should not be entered.
It is reasonable to expect it to affect the southern and western parts of the city over time, and unreasonable to price that in today. The effects arrive in a sequence: construction traffic first, then employment as office and health ground fills, then residents from 2028 at the earliest, then the retail and entertainment that follows residents. Anything you are told about the effect on a specific address today is an opinion about a fifteen year programme.
The land is held by the Point of the Mountain State Land Authority, created by the Utah Legislature for this site, with Mike Ambre as executive director since October 2024. Delivery of the first phase sits with The Point Partners, a venture of Lincoln Property Company, Colmena Group and Wadsworth Development Group. That split matters in practice: the authority answers questions about what will be built and to what standard, and the developer answers questions about individual buildings.
Nothing funded. Light rail between Draper and Lehi is the locally preferred alternative in the environmental work completed with a federal finding in 2025, at an anticipated cost approaching a billion dollars, and the build is not funded. State money has been committed to a first phase that is a mobility zone rather than the rail line itself. Commuter rail capacity through the gap is a separate programme on its own timetable, and both are covered on the commute page here.
The Point is a bet on a decade, not an amenity today.
Buying near a district that will not be finished for fifteen years is a legitimate decision and a completely different one from buying near a finished amenity, and the two get conflated constantly in this corridor. If that is the calculation you are running, tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who follows this ground, and stay on the file for the homework and the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.