How the Magna Earthquake Could Have “Saved” Salt Lake City’s Historic Rio Grande Depot

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Salt Lake City — Jerrod Johnson arrived at the Rio Grande Warehouse shortly after a massive 5.7-magnitude earthquake rocked the building on March 18, 2020, and found cracks in the plastered walls and floors.

The earthquake, and its aftershocks, damaged the century-old building so badly that it has remained closed for more than three years and counting, while crews repair and modify it for any future seismic activity. But the earthquake also exposed the building’s structural and other shortcomings, giving experts such as Johnson, director of the structural engineering firm Reaveley Engineers, a better understanding of how to repair the building and help it last another century.

he said in a new video released by the Utah State Historic Preservation Office. “I think we might look back and we might finally say that the Magna earthquake saved that building.”

However, it may be some time before the building reopens. It is a delicate process and could take “several years” to complete, said those behind the renovation project, during a virtual roundtable on the building’s future organized by the state agency on Thursday.

“It’s a big project that touches a lot of areas of the building,” said Sarah Staffansson, an architect at CRSA, whose colleagues emphasized that there is no real timetable for all the work to be done because they want the work done “right.”

Complex renovation

The Rio Grande Depot, home to the Utah Department of State History and its extensive historical collection at the time of the earthquake, first opened in 1910. It was designed by noted Chicago architect Henry Schlax, using a mixture of Renaissance and Revival Beaux-Arts architectural styles.

It remained a station along the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad for that time before trains fell out of favor and the station was no longer needed. Utah eventually acquired the property in 1977 and it has remained in state hands ever since.

Some renovations have taken place over time; In fact, the state replaced the historic neon sign with a more modern LED replica about six months before the earthquake. Work to repair the severe damage began immediately.

Jim Russell, director of the state’s Division of Facilities Construction and Management, looks at damage at the Rio Grande Warehouse in Salt Lake City on April 9, 2020. The damage was caused by a 5.7-magnitude earthquake centered in Magna on March 18, 2020. (Photo: Steve Griffin, USA TODAY) Deseret News)

However, Johnson, Staffansson, and everyone else who were assigned to the project faced a major roadblock: They wanted to keep all of the building’s historic features but there were still many documents about how the warehouse was constructed.

John Iwanoxy, an engineer and member of the Salt Lake City Historic Landmarks Commission, said they found four plans between 1908 and 1909, which helped them figure out the spatial aspects of the building. There were also some useful papers from when the state purchased the property.

John Vance, project manager for the state’s Department of Facilities Construction and Management, looks at damage at the Rio Grande Warehouse in Salt Lake City on April 9, 2020 (Photo: Steve Griffin, Deseret News)

It helped a bit, but the team did an “investigative” demolition of some parts of the building, looking for what was hiding behind the plaster that the structural drawings would have told them about, Ioannovsky explained. They also hired a consultant who helped them through the painstaking process of using historical photos and other materials to figure out how to assemble the kits to design Schlacks more than 110 years ago.

“This was very difficult,” he said. “Usually, there’s something to come off of, as far as the original drawings are concerned, especially for a building of this kind of generic nature.”

The team members think they have everything figured out now, but it will take some time for the repairs to last another 100 years. The state history collection has since been moved to several other locations across the Salt Lake Valley before ending up in a new state museum at the Utah Capitol in the coming years.

This experience is why Johnson says it is important for people to hold on to important documents. He said the few documents the team found played a huge role in moving the project forward.

He said, “They were worth their weight in gold.”

The importance of reinforcement

The March 2020 earthquake also damaged dozens of other famous old buildings in the valley and led to the demolition of a historic mansion in Salt Lake City.

Johnson explained that there are between 140,000 and 180,000 unsupported buildings in the area, many of which are structures built before the 1980s. There are some programs available to help residents pay for retrofits, such as Salt Lake City’s “Fix the Bricks” program, but it’s a problem that looms large over the state.

That’s why he points to the Rio Grande depot as an important anecdote that sheds light on the issue.

“(The repository) is kind of a hallmark of the vulnerabilities that we have,” he said. “This model should be seen as a good example of what can happen and what needs to be done.”

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Carter Williams is an award-winning reporter covering general news, outdoors, history, and sports for KSL.com. He previously worked at Deseret News. It is transplanted in Utah via Rochester, NY.

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