Gateway shops missing out on downtown resurgence

A report released Tuesday shows that retail sales in downtown Salt Lake City were up 36 percent last year, largely driven by business at City Creek Center. But some businesses at The Gateway Shopping Center say they are not seeing the same trend.

To find Bear Country Cookies at The Gateway Shopping Center you just follow your nose. Down the escalator from the movie theater, next to a few restaurants, you start to smell the cinnamon, almond, lemon, and butter. Owner Joel Clark says they rely on that smell to bring people in.

Clark says his business has consistently done well since they opened in 2003 - one of the first shops at the Gateway - but sales have dropped 35 percent since City Creek Center opened in downtown Salt Lake more than a year ago.

A recent Economic Benchmark report commissioned by Salt Lake City’s Downtown Alliance sees new retail leasing activity at The Gateway as a positive sign that sales will go up. KUER

Downtown Farmers Market Extends Summer Hours

The Downtown Farmers Market opens for the summer this Saturday in Pioneer Park. Vendors selling locally-grown produce and goods will stay a little later than normal this year.

Nearly ten thousand people every Saturday during the summer visit the downtown farmers market, so this year vendors will stay open an extra hour. Kim Angeli is Director of the Downtown Farmers Market and she says the extra hour will give people more time and room to browse.

Marketgoers can buy local produce and food, hear live music and browse tables with goods produced by local artisans.

Starting June 8th, the market will be open on Saturdays in Pioneer Park from 8 AM until 2 PM. KUER

2 hotels to be built in downtown Salt Lake City

Two new hotels in Salt Lake City will be erected south of EnergySolutions Arena, and although they won’t fulfill the need for a convention hotel, they are being touted as a welcome addition to downtown.

The $65 million mixed-use development will include a 159-room extended-stay Hyatt House, a 175-room Courtyard by Marriott, a parking garage and ground-level retail at the intersection of 100 South and 300 West.

Construction on the 100 South hotel complex has begun, and an opening is set for late 2014 or early 2015. Salt Lake Tribune

Renovation set for revered Little America Coffee Shop

On Monday, Little America Coffee Shop undergoes a six-month renovation and the restaurant will close for remodeling. However, breakfast, lunch and dinner will still be available next door in the steakhouse dining room. The renovation takes place at the same time the first floor of the downtown hotel, 500 South Main, also receives a face-lift. Salt Lake Tribune

Pie Five Pizza coming to Utah, in Holladay in late April

Pie Five Pizza Co. is set to open its first Utah restaurant later this month, in Holladay at 3158 E. 6200 South.

An exact date will be announced soon, say company officials.

Utah franchise owner John Gilleland and his partners were awarded a multi-unit franchise agreement, with plans to open an additional seven locations in Utah. Salt Lake Tribune

West Valley Breaks Ground on Residential Building

Crews have broken ground on the first new residential building located at Fairbourne Station in West Valley City, a mixed-use redevelopment at the city’s center. Construction of the residential building is the latest milestone in the city’s revitalization project.

The 225-unit apartment building will be constructed at 2900 West Lehman Avenue between The Promenade, a six-acre park that opened August 2012, and the new Embassy Suites hotel, which opened last January. It is also steps away from an intermodal transit station that offers light rail, bus rapid transit and traditional bus service.

The Residences at Fairbourne Station are being developed by ICO development, an Ivory Homes Company. Construction is expected to be complete in fall of 2014, and additional residences are planned for future development. Utah Business

Salt Lake City’s Gateway launches $2 million renovation

Although adding new stores to fill empty storefronts doesn’t appear imminent, The Gateway is endeavoring to remake itself, starting with a $2 million renovation at the downtown Salt Lake City mall.

This comes as the one-year anniversary approaches for the opening of neighboring City Creek Center, which over the past 12 months has landed more than a dozen high-profile retail tenants that used to call The Gateway home.

The renovation project is focusing on ambiance and on the 12-year-old Gateway becoming more of a community gathering spot, said General Manager Scott Bennett.

By early summer, shoppers will see more shaded seating areas, surrounded by flowering plants. More than 220 seats will be added to nearly 150 existing spots designed to allow shoppers to rest and relax. In colder months, the areas will be warmed by fire pits. Salt Lake Tribune

Utah’s first Dunkin’ Donuts to open in Salt Lake in June

Sizzling Platter, a Utah-based restaurant management company plans to open the first of 16 Utah Dunkin’ Donuts locations in Salt Lake City at 200 E. 400 South in June.

Sizzling Platter is renovating a former Burger King, across from the Salt Lake City Public Library.

Sizzling Platter operates Dunkin’ Donuts locations in Texas and manages restaurant locations across seven western states under the Dunkin’ Donuts, Little Caesars, Sizzler, Red Robin and Hoppers Grill & Brewery brands. Salt Lake Tribune

Downtown convention hotel gets committee approval

Utah's capital city is one step closer to having a new hotel adjacent to the Salt Palace Convention Center.

On Tuesday, the Senate Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee passed SB267, which establishes a tax credit for the proposed hotel.

Many community members testified to the enormous economic impact the hotel could have on the city and state.

Bill sponsor and Senate Majority Whip Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said the hotel would give more validity to the convention center.

Under the proposal, a private developer would finance the construction of the convention center hotel, while public funds would be used to purchase the land for the property and to build a parking structure, costing taxpayers $99.5 million up front.

The projected public investment would be paid back in 7½ years and would yield a 14.6 percent return on the investment, according to Jeff Sachs, of Strategic Advisory Group, the consultant hired by Salt Lake County to assess the economic impact of the project.

Once built, the hotel would receive a 20-year sales tax rebate from the state, contingent upon its success.

But some lawmakers and local business leaders say the plan would create an uneven playing field. Clint Ensign of Sinclair Industries, representing the Grand and Little America hotels, said Grand America could not compete with the convention hotel if it received the proposed $20,000 per day tax subsidy.

Gov. Gary Herbert said he'll look at the proposal for a convention hotel but isn't convinced government needs to be involved in the project. Deseret News

Utah business makes energy bars from crickets

Pat Crowley wants to attract Americans to what most of the world’s population already knows: Edible insects are a rich source of protein that’s easy on the Earth.

Crickets ground into flour — that way there are no legs or antennae to think about — provide the protein in the energy bars Crowley and his three partners started making last September.

The business is small but growing steadily, with 2,000 bars sold last month. The Chapul Bars — it means cricket or grasshopper in Aztec — are sold for about $3 in 30 locally-owned stores in 12 states, and Crowley expects to double the retail locations in the next month. He also is about to double the number of energy bar flavors — bringing it to four — and will soon be moving to a larger kitchen.

"People are ready for a change," Crowley said. "They’re more in tune with where their food comes from and the unsustainability of our mainstream food products."

Some 80 percent of the world’s population intentionally eats 1,700 species of insects for food. People eat red tree ants in Cambodia, bee larvae in Japan and grasshoppers in Mexico, Crowley said.
Americans and Europeans are notably absent from the guest list.

As Crowley mixes up a batch of his Thai flavored bars — cricket flour stirred with coconut flakes, dates, almond butter, agave nectar, cashews, ginger and lime — he says the flavors are inspired by cultures where insects are traditionally consumed as part of their diets.


Utah has its own cultural tradition of eating insects. Like about 50 percent of Native American tribes that used insects as food, the Utes and Southern Paiutes did, too. In the 1870s, John Wesley Powell noted that grasshoppers and crickets were collected in droves, roasted like seeds and ground down to be eaten as a mush or in cakes.

They were eaten whole, salted and sun-dried, "much as residents of any present-day neighborhood lounge consume beer nuts," David B. Madsen, Utah’s former state archeologist, wrote in his article "A Grasshopper in Every Pot" published in a Nevada historical quarterly in 1989. Madsen has also written that Mormon pioneer diaries were full of references to eating insects.

Not only were insects widely used as Native Americans’ winter food storage, they also were a delicacy. The mixture of insects, pine nuts and berries left to dry in the sun was called "desert fruitcake."

Chapul bars can currently be found in many locations in the Salt Lake City area as well as OARS in Vernal. Salt Lake Tribune

New ‘diner’ will help Utah’s homeless veterans share a meal

Veteran Garie Spencer, who lives in Salt Lake City’s Freedom Landing on North Temple with 108 other formerly homeless veterans, will help celebrate the opening of Freedom Diner, a kitchen and dining room where the veterans will be able to gather for coffee in the morning, cook for one another and share meals.

Freedom Landing, owned and operated by the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City, is in an old Days Inn, so the motel rooms-turned-apartments lack kitchens.

The new diner just off the lobby was once a breakfast room and, after the Housing Authority turned the motel into transitional housing for homeless veterans, a television room.

Now, it is decorated in Americana, with big blue and white floor tiles, the Coca-Cola tables and stools, and a huge bank of red cabinets stocked with canned goods, pasta, rice, cereal and even toilet paper, donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Veterans will have music from a jukebox where they can play CDs, dock their music players or listen to the radio.

One of the two stoves is wheelchair accessible, as are some of the counters and tables.
Kelly Olsen, one of the five female veterans living at Freedom Landing feels it will be good for making friends.

The goal of transitional housing like Freedom Landing is to help the veterans gain stability so they can live independently and work. The Department of Veterans Affairs has five case managers on site who work with the veterans, and the VA pays the housing authority a per diem amount for each veteran, which covers the agency’s costs. Between 40 percent and 50 percent of the veterans at Freedom Landing have jobs and pay 30 percent of their rent, Leka says.

The project began three years ago as part of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki’s goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.

"We may be the first of the states and Salt Lake may be the first community in ending homeless veterans," says Bill Nighswonger, executive director of the housing authority. Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake lands agronomy society conventions for 2015, 2025

Visit Salt Lake has announced it has agreed to deals that will bring two agronomy societies to Salt Lake City in 2021 and 2025 for conventions that are expected to attract 6,000 visitors and generate more than $5 million in spending each year.

The annual meetings of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America and Soil Science Society of America are set for November at the Salt Palace Convention Center.

The societies are dedicated to the conservation and wise use of natural resources to produce food, feed and fiber crops, while maintaining and improving the environment.

Visit Salt Lake said competition for the bookings was intense because of the conventions’ size and because they are scheduled at otherwise slow times of the year.

Visit Salt Lake is a private, nonprofit corporation responsible for the promotion of Salt Lake as a convention and travel destination. Salt Lake Tribune

Sugarhouse BBQ to move as streetcar project rolls along

The SugarHouse Barbecue Company, a mainstay in Salt Lake City for 17 years, is moving to make way for the return of streetcars.

In April, the restaurant will move two blocks east, from 2207 S. 700 East to the new location at 880 E. 2100 South.

Owner Bill Smithers is remodeling the building at the new location, which should be done sometime in the early spring. Diners, hopefully, will not go more than a week between the old building closing and the new location’s opening.

The restaurant specializes in Memphis-style barbecue, featuring a process called dry rub. A blend of spices is rubbed into the meat, which is then slow smoked for several hours. Diners have a choice of four different sauces and a variety of side dishes.

For years, it hasn’t been easy to drive into the restaurant, particularly for motorists traveling southbound on 700 East. Entering the property will become even more difficult with the new streetcars. In addition, the restaurant will be losing as many as 30 parking stalls, which are currently being leased for its customers.


Construction on the streetcar network began last May. Riders should be able to use the new streetcar system, complete with seven stations, by the end of 2013.

The streetcars will run along a new two-mile stretch of rail that will connect South Salt Lake’s old warehouse district near the Central Pointe TRAX light rail station to the thriving commercial hub in the Sugar House neighborhood.

The $37.2 million Sugar House project is funded from a $26 million federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grant and $11.2 million from South Salt Lake, Salt Lake City and Utah Transit Authority funds.

UTA expects the project to generate 700 short-term construction jobs and to add 7,500 new jobs to the local economy by 2030. It also could generate over $1 billion in new business development along the line.

In the early 1900s the Salt Lake Valley hosted a thriving electric streetcar network. But the trolleys made their last runs by 1946, giving way to bus and automobile travel. Today, streetcars are seeing resurgence,

partly due to fuel prices and environmental concerns, and are revitalizing urban neighborhoods around the nation. Salt Lake Tribune

Expansion across Utah continues for Dickey’s Barbecue Pit

Last month John Thomson, Dickey’s Barbecue multi-unit franchise owner, opened his twelfth Dickey’s location and this week he’s at it again! On Thursday, February 21 a new Dickey’s location opened in the Sandy community at 11 a.m. The first 100 customers received a free Pulled Pork Big Barbecue sandwich.

“I’m passionate about our food and am proud to be a part of this fast growing brand,” said Dickey's multi-unit franchise owner, John Thomson. “Dickey’s offers true authentic pit smoked barbecue and an incredible franchise that is good for barbecue lovers and the communities they serve.”

Since Thomson began his career with Dickey’s he hasn’t stopped. Recently, Thomson became the Area Developer for Utah and Colorado and currently has seven stores in development in Utah, Colorado and Idaho, including Logan, Denver, Aurora, Pocatello, and Twin Falls.

“I enjoy serving communities across Utah,” said Thomson. “We can’t wait to open this new location on Thursday and hope the whole community comes out to enjoy our slow smoked barbecue.”

The new Dickey’s Barbecue in Sandy is located at 9228 S. Village Shop Drive. Business Wire

Real Foods opens 4th Utah market, in Salt Lake City

Real Foods Market, an organic grocery and health food store, is opening another Utah location this summer, in Salt Lake City at 2209 S. Highland Drive.

The chain, owned by Redmond Heritage Farms Inc., operates three other markets, in Orem, Heber City, and St. George.

Many products are supplied by Redmond Heritage Farms, in Sevier County.

The Real Foods Market product list includes raw milk, grass-fed beef, farm-fresh eggs, wild- caught fish, organic produce, raw nuts and seeds, sprouted grains, healthy oils, fermented foods, homemade bone broths and more. The in-house chef, Ryan Staples, makes meals for the deli from scratch, with whole-food ingredients, using traditional methods.

"The market was established to share forgotten nutritional principles and make available the hard-to-find, nutrient-rich food supply needed for optimum health," said Rhett Roberts, CEO of Redmond Inc., the parent company to Redmond Heritage Farms. Salt Lake Tribune

First Habit Burger opened in Utah

A California-based burger chain opened its first Utah location and is looking to immediately give back to the community.

The Habit Burger Grill celebrated its grand opening Thursday, Jan. 10, at 2121 S. McClelland St. (about 1050 East). But before that, it held charity events to benefit three Utah nonprofits. Patrons were invited to dine at the new restaurant, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to the organizations.

Proceeds were donated to YMCA of Northern Utah, Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Salt Lake, and YWCA of Salt Lake City. KSL

Taylorsville Business Park Envisioned on Ex-landfill

As a reclaimed landfill and former gravel pit, the parcel at 6200 South and Bangerter Highway was a difficult sell. In the decade since the site was cleaned up, city officials still couldn’t persuade businesses to set up shop.

That could change. The Taylorsville City Council, sitting as the Redevelopment Agency board, has approved a plan to create the Bennion Point Economic Development Area (EDA).

Now, the city will be able to use up to $14 million in tax increment — the taxes generated from the increased assessed value of a property within the area — to reimburse some of the infrastructure costs incurred by companies that choose to locate there.

Work to remediate the property, which was used as a gravel pit when the Utah Department of Transportation built the Bangerter Highway and as a Salt Lake County landfill, was completed in 2002. However, the additional costs of grading and adding infrastructure such as roads and sewers have made the 130-acre plot unattractive to developers, according to Donald Adams, Taylorsville economic development director.

City officials hope the EDA plan, approved 4-0 Wednesday at a Redevelopment Agency meeting, will turn the vacant land into a thriving business park adjacent to a few residential areas.

The plan envisions 14 acres with nearly 60 single family homes added near existing homes that are just outside the EDA; 9 acres of commercial and retail enterprises, such as a convenience store, a couple of fast-food restaurants and strip malls; 10 acres of offices; and 51 acres of flex space, or buildings that can be used for offices or light industrial purposes. The remaining acreage is for roads, parks and open space.


Lewis Young Robertson & Burningham Inc., a Salt Lake City firm commissioned to do a cost/benefit analysis, estimates that investing the tax increment in the EDA has the potential to bring $91.6 million in private investment and at least 800 jobs to Taylorsville.

Tax increment will be used for 15 years or until the amount reaches $14 million, whichever comes first. For now, the land is tax-exempt because it is owned by either the Utah Department of Transportation or Taylorsville.

Another benefit of putting a business park at the location is that commercial traffic will flow opposite of the morning and evening rush hours on heavily used 6200 South, the report says. It added that traffic patterns, in turn, will cut down on the $90 million to $100 million in road improvements that would eventually be needed if the area were to become primarily residential. Salt Lake Tribune

Buffalo Wild Wings Opens in West Valley City

Buffalo Wild Wings has opened its newest Utah location in West Valley City at 2927 S. 5600 West.

The West Valley City Buffalo Wild Wings features big screens and wall-to-wall HD TVs for event and sports viewing.

Its menu includes boneless wings, specialty burgers and sandwiches, ribs, finger foods, wraps and salads, along with 20 signature sauces and seasonings. Buffalo Wild Wings also has two signature events each week: Wing Tuesdays and Boneless Thursdays, where diners may order their favorite traditional or boneless wings at a special price.

The restaurant is open 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to midnight on Sunday.
Buffalo Wild Wings, Inc., founded in 1982 and headquartered in Minneapolis, has nearly 900 locations across 49 states and Canada. Salt Lake Tribune

Downtown SLC to Get Two LEED-certified Restaurants

Equiwest Hospitality said it plans to open what it describes as the state’s first LEED-certified restaurants in the 222 Main tower in downtown Salt Lake City.

Bistro 222, a casual full-service restaurant, will occupy 3,500 square feet of the building’s main lobby and Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse will occupy 3,000 square feet north of the building’s lobby.

"The locational opportunity for both concepts is unique as downtown Salt lake City continues to attract more entertainment, sport, employment, shoppers, diners, conventioneers and tourists," Jeremy Ford, partner and general manager of Equiwest Hospitality, said in a statement announcing the new restaurants.

Ford said the 222 building, developed by Hamilton Partners was the first LEED Gold certified ground-up high-rise in Utah and will provides the platform for the restaurants to also obtain LEED certification.

SWS Consulting of Utah will provide design and certification services with both restaurants targeting a March 2013 opening. Salt Lake Tribune

New Dining Options at Salt Lake City International Airport

The Salt Lake City International Airport is offering 13 new dining options.

The eateries were showcased during ceremonies on Thursday at the airport.

The dining venues are Salt Lake City Pizza & Pasta, High West Distillery & Saloon, Café Rio Mexican Grill, Mill Creek Coffee Roasters, Vivace by Cucina Toscana, Greek Souvlaki, Market Street Grill, Auntie Anne’s, Smashburger, Great Wraps, Fresh Market On The Go, French Meadow Bakery & Café and Starbucks.

Last year, airport officials also showcased businesses as part of the first overhaul of eateries and shops in half a century. The Salt Lake airport makeover began in August 2011.

The businesses are under the management of HMSHost, one of seven umbrella vendors operating the airport’s concession areas. HMSHost is a part of Italy-based Autogrill Group, a provider of food and retail services that manages 5,300 stores in more than 1,200 locations, including the 20 busiest airports in North America. Salt Lake Tribune