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Salt Lake City officials won't say where the Hoberman Arch is now stored since parts of the Olympic icon were stolen in broad daylight from an impound lot last month.
But they will say that 29 pieces are missing, according to an inventory by an engineer who helped install the arch when it was the centerpiece at the Olympic Medals Plaza at the 2002 Winter Games.
The good news is the missing parts can be copied, according to City Hall spokesman Art Raymond.
The Hoberman Arch could again be assembled as a symbol of Salt Lake City's Olympic Games.
But that doesn't seem to be imminent because nobody at City Hall seems to know where to put it.
When assembled, the phenomenal 31,000-pound aluminum web made up of dozens of individual parts is 36 feet high and 72 feet wide. It opens and closes like the iris of an eye.
But since the Closing Ceremony in February 2002 the questioned has remained: Where should the arch go?
A spokesman for the Becker administration said the city's Arts Council is studying the issue.
And the City Council doesn't look to be in a rush to find a permanent home for designer Chuck Hoberman's masterpiece, either.
But Don Butterfield has an idea — one the co-chairman of the Capitol Hill Community Council isn't afraid to run up the flag pole. He'd like to see it permanently located at the nine-acre Warm Springs Park, 840 N. 300 West.
Later this month, the Capitol Hill council will begin discussions that are expected to eventually yield a new park master plan. According to Butterfield's vision, that would include an amphitheater on the park's south end; a fountain and splash pad somewhere in the middle; and, at the north end, the expanded Hoberman Arch.
"It's the perfect place for the arch," Butterfield said. "Legislators will drive by and every day it will remind us of the great feat of hosting the Olympics."
Rather than keeping it in a static position, as it was at Rice-Eccles Stadium at the University of Utah from 2003 to last summer, Butterfield said it should be situated so it can be expanded and lighted.
"In my vision of the arch, there would be a light show every weekend where it went through the whole range of things it did at the Medal's Ceremony."
City Councilman Stan Penfold, whose District 3 encompasses Capitol Hill, said he isn't against a Warm Springs proposal, necessarily, but the city should take time to find the right home. "I'm not ready to say where," Penfold said. "But I'm interested in seeing if there isn't a place closer to downtown."
And so, it appears, Salt Lake City is back where it started 13 years ago.
As the Winter Games ended in 2002, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee offered Salt Lake City about $8 million to establish an Olympic Park that would include such things as the arch and the cauldron from the Opening Ceremony.
Then-Mayor Rocky Anderson favored Pioneer Park but the City Council wanted it at Gallivan Plaza. Since the council controls the city's purse strings it won out.
But the Olympic memorabilia, by International Olympic Committee mandate, could not be situated near non-Olympic corporate sponsorships. Activities at Gallivan depend on such funding, making it a no-go for an Olympic Park.
In a bind to find a place for the arch, SLOC convinced the U. to take it under a contract that expired in 2009. The school notified Mayor Ralph Becker in April that the arch had to be moved. In August, as the icon was being dismantled, the Becker administration said the news that the Hoberman masterpiece was coming down caught them by surprise.
The dismantled arch was hauled to the city's impound lot at 2100 W. 500 South, where it sat near the fence along 500 South for about three months. But on Dec. 6, police received a complaint that a man in a pickup truck climbed the fence and threw pieces of the arch to an accomplice before driving away. A police investigation is ongoing.
Since 2003, there has been little discussion concerning where to put an Olympic Park. This week, however, Councilman Luke Garrott, the newly selected chairman of the body, said he would make room soon on the council's agenda to begin earnest deliberations on such a park that would include the arch.