In February 2008, AMS was engaged by the County of Salt Lake to prepare a Cultural Facilities Master Plan. AMS worked with a community-based committee of leaders from the business, cultural, governmental, religious and educational sectors of the County and through a process of comprehensive research and consensus-building, developed recommendations for a twenty year plan for cultural facilities development.

AMS undertook a vast research effort to identify the needs of the County's arts and cultural sector, interviewing over 200 community and cultural leaders and surveying over 130 organizations.  We inventoried over 125 facilities to determine gaps and redundancies in the current supply of cultural spaces. Surveys responses from more than  1,600 local residents were collected, and more 100,000 patron records from participating arts organizations were analyzed.

This wealth of data was synthesized into a comprehensive Needs Assessment of the community's short- and long-term facility requirements.  Master Plan Projects throughout the region were identified and a support program designed to enable the County to evaluate cultural facility projects for public funding.

Image courtesy of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill