The Point Draper Construction Update: What’s Rising Now
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Drive south on I-15 past the Bangerter interchange this summer and you'll see it: two excavators parked where guard towers used to stand, a construction fence wrapping ground that sat quiet for three years after the old Utah State Prison came down. Something is finally happening at The Point. Most Draper residents ask one question first: when do the new houses go up? The honest answer is not yet, and probably not for a while. What's actually rising right now has almost nothing to do with housing.
Back when this project first made headlines, the story that stuck was housing. Early coverage described a plan for more than 3,000 residential units eventually spread across the 600-acre site, and that number is the one people carried around for the next few years. It's not wrong, exactly. It's just early. That 3,000-unit figure describes the long arc of the whole district, built out over more than a decade, not what's happening on the ground this month.
What broke ground on June 29, 2026 is Phase 1: a 104-acre downtown core backed by a $2.3 billion private investment from a development team called The Point Partners, made up of Lincoln Property Company, Colmena Group, and Draper-based Wadsworth Development Group. The state kicked in another $165 million for infrastructure. Kip Wadsworth, the company's CEO, grew up in Draper and still lives there. At the groundbreaking he told the crowd, "What you are seeing here today is not one standalone project." He meant that as reassurance. For a resident trying to figure out what to expect on their commute this fall, it's also a warning: this isn't one thing finishing on one date. It's several separate construction fronts moving on separate clocks.
The piece people picture when they think "housing" at The Point, the River District's owner-occupied homes, hasn't broken ground. It's not close. The developer selection process is still underway, with a mandatory pre-proposal meeting held July 16, 2026. According to the state's own release on that process, vertical construction on those homes isn't expected to begin until spring 2028.
The residential building that did go vertical on June 29 is called Chroma, and it's apartments, not the single-family homes and townhomes people assume are coming. It's a 363-unit complex with 42,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, designed as the social center of the district. Right next to it, construction has also started on a roughly 5,000-seat venue now named the Mountain America Event Center, following a naming-rights deal with the local credit union. Oak View Group, the same company that manages large arenas nationally, will operate it and run food and hospitality for concerts, sports, and community events.
Governor Spencer Cox was at the ceremony and called the project "a gift to the future from the people of today." It's a big line for what is, at this stage, still mostly rebar and dirt. But the pieces attached to that line are specific and dated.
Here's where things actually stand as of this month:
| Piece | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Mountain America Event Center | Roughly 5,000-seat venue for concerts, sports, and community events, operated by Oak View Group | Vertical construction underway since the June 29 groundbreaking |
| Chroma | 363-unit apartment building with 42,000 square feet of ground-floor retail | Vertical construction underway since the June 29 groundbreaking |
| The Promenade | A 2,000-foot walkable street for dining, shopping, and gathering | Under construction as part of Phase 1 |
| Convergence Hall | A shared building bringing Utah's public university system under one roof | Groundbreaking planned later this year |
| University of Utah Health campus | A health campus of just under 46 acres adjacent to Phase 1 | Land acquisition announced; no construction date yet |
| River District housing | 800 to 900 owner-occupied single-family homes, townhomes, and condos on about 50 acres | Developer selection underway; vertical construction targeted for spring 2028 |
Look at that list again. The two things furthest along, an arena and an apartment building, are the two things least like what most people mean when they say "The Point is bringing new houses to Draper."
If you've noticed lane shifts or night work on Porter Rockwell Boulevard this summer, that's not your imagination and it's not directly tied to the groundbreaking ceremony. UDOT started a separate preservation project on June 1, 2026, resurfacing the stretch of Porter Rockwell between Harmon Day Drive and 14600 South, replacing the top layer of road, updating shoulders, and improving pedestrian ramps. Most of the work is happening at night, and UDOT expects it to wrap by fall 2026.
That's a maintenance project on an existing road, separate from the newer segment of Porter Rockwell being built specifically to serve The Point site, which developers have said should be finished by late 2026, with the connecting roads around it completed through summer 2027. In practice, that means residents driving this corridor could see construction activity tied to two different projects, on two different timelines, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other. Neither one means the arena or the apartments are behind schedule. It just means the road itself is under more pressure than the buildings next to it are getting credit for.
The River District is the piece closest to what people picture when they hear "new homes at The Point." It sits immediately west of Porter Rockwell Boulevard, next to a planned FrontRunner commuter rail station, and the state's plan calls for a mix of single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums on about 50 acres.
But the process for actually building it is still in its early administrative stage. The state issued a request for qualified developers, held a mandatory meeting for interested builders on July 16, 2026, and hasn't yet selected who will build it. Based on the state's own projected timeline, the roads immediately around that housing won't be finished until summer 2027, and actual vertical construction on the homes themselves isn't expected before spring 2028. If you're waiting to see what these homes look like or what they'll cost, you're waiting for something that's still roughly two years from breaking ground, not months.
The version of this story that gets repeated at dinner parties is "The Point is finally happening," as if it's one event. It's more accurate to think of it as several projects layered on top of each other, each on its own schedule. Over the next year or so, what you're likely to actually see change is the shape of the event center and Chroma rising out of the ground, continued road work in and around Porter Rockwell Boulevard tied to two unrelated projects, and a groundbreaking for Convergence Hall sometime later this year. What you almost certainly won't see yet is finished single-family homes, because that piece of the plan is still choosing a builder.
Years ago, before any of this had broken ground, Draper Mayor Troy Walker told local reporters the property tax revenue alone could eventually run $30 to $40 million a year once the site was built out. That number gives a sense of scale for where this is all headed. It doesn't tell you much about what you'll notice from your own street this fall, which is mostly cranes, night paving crews, and an arena taking shape faster than anyone expected the actual houses to.
If you're trying to make sense of how a project this size might touch your own neighborhood, your commute, or your plans down the road, that's exactly the kind of question Ashley & Andrew Wolocatiuk like to help Draper residents work through. Reach out any time you want a straight answer instead of a headline.
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