I'm inclined to go with the "book a new ticket" option since it also lets me take advantage of (slightly better) corporate rates and will make expense reporting cleaner.

If I go that route and split the tickets and cancel my return flight after I'm already in SLC, will I retain the value of the return flight less the change fee? I just want to make sure I don't waste the value of that segment since it's about 80% of the original ticket cost.

EDITED to add: Oh, I think I found the answer to my question in a different thread (required slightly better searching), so it seems like the answer is I'll get back a voucher less the change fee which is definitely the preferred outcome.