The team will play its final season in Salt Lake City in 2024.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Salt Lake Bees open their season at Smith’s Ballpark in 2021 in Salt Lake City. The team plans to relocate to South Jordan.
Minor league baseball’s Salt Lake Bees are leaving Utah’s capital for new suburban pastures.
The Triple-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels will leave its decades-long home in Salt Lake City’s Ballpark neighborhood at the end of the 2024 season for a new stadium to be built in South Jordan’s Daybreak.
The team’s owner, the Larry H. Miller Co., said construction on a new stadium would begin this year and be privately financed.
“The team is grateful for the long-term legacy of baseball in Salt Lake City,” the company said in a statement, “and for the incredible fans and surrounding community that support the team.”
It noted that the team’s affiliation with Angels would continue in its new digs, adding that the new stadium would be built on unspecified, undeveloped property between the Mountain View Corridor and the TRAX light rail Red Line. It is expected to be in place for the 2025 season.
The South Jordan stadium, the company added, “will serve as a year-round entertainment anchor for the fast-growing southwest quadrant of Salt Lake County.”
The Bees’ departure raises questions, however, about the future of the Ballpark neighborhood, which has long relied on the stadium as an anchor to spur development and economic activity. A plan for the area, adopted last fall by the Salt Lake City Council, centered around the ballpark and called for development of a festival street on West Temple.
“LHM is excited about the future of Salt Lake City,” the company said, “and will continue to partner with community leaders to enrich and reimagine the neighborhood surrounding the current stadium.”
Mayor Erin Mendenhall will announce the path forward for the stadium site Tuesday at a 10 am news conference.
The Bees have played at Smith’s Ballpark since the stadium opened in 1994.
The Larry H. Miller Co. did not say if the team would change its name, but the Bees did file a trademark application last month for “Utah Bees.”
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