Downtown was awful. There was no appeal to being there, and it was getting worse. I would have felt much safer walking around New York at night than Salt Lake.

But the main point that many are missing is how many more people City Creek affects than LES.

LES is filled up about 7 times a year (say 6 home games and Stadium of Fire). Let's be generous and say it average 65,000 per event. That's a total of 455,000 people, and for a total time of about 30 hours. Does anybody really think the effect here is even comparable to downtown Salt Lake City? And this doesn't even account for how much more is spent downtown vs. LES (Mormons are notoriously cheap - especially if brining the family to a football game).

I would love to see some serious cash invested into LES. But trying to justify it by pointing to the Church's investment in City Creek is ludicrous.