Robert F. Farrington Jr., a nationally known urban and community planner whose decades of public and private sector work in Salt Lake City helped transform the city’s business life and downtown heart, died Monday after a battle with colon cancer. He was 66.
Farrington was the founding executive director of Salt Lake City’s Downtown Alliance, a business group that formed in 1991 and now represents more than 2,500 business and property owners in the city’s central business district. He was recruited to Salt Lake City from San Antonio, where he had served in a similar role.
During his 16-year tenure with the alliance, from 1992 to 2008, the city saw about $4 billion in public and private investment.