Ep 104: Main Street or Wall Street? Salt Lake City, Utah as an example

Main Street businesses districts all over America have been traded for Wall Street publicly traded corporations. This is an example of how downtown Salt Lake City's Main Street has been traded for malls custom-tailored for Wall Street traded corporations.Show more

In downtown Salt Lake City prior to WWII, Main Street was the central hub for financial, economic and cultural activity. Due to suburban sprawl businesses and residents began moving away from the city center. This was facilitated by removing Salt Lake City's mass transit trolley system, along with the completion of the Interstate Highways. Due to these factors, it became easy for large department stores and shopping malls to build in suburban shopping areas. This began to shift retail, restaurants, financial and cultural areas out from city centers into the suburbs.

Salt Lake City's response to this trend, was to build malls on Main Street: first the ZCMI Center Mall, built around 1965, followed by the Crossroads Mall, built in 1978. We examine in this episode of the Utah Stories Show whether or not building these malls was a good idea to increase economic vitality on Main Street, or whether this was essentially trading long-established local retailers such as the Auerbach Department store, Paris Company, Broadway Music among many more -- for national chain stores and Wall Street traded public corporations such as Nordstrom and J.C. Pennys.

It's a debate concerning the economic development of our cities and towns in America, using Salt Lake City as an example. We would love to hear your thoughts, ideas and comments on this very important subject.

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