14
June 2013
Catalystmagazine.net
The Granary District Finding the balance between progress and provenance in downtown SLC’s industrial landscape BY SHANE FARVER
COMMUNITY t may look to the casual passerby In addition to the crates, organizlike an urban sacrifice zone—the ers envision a stage for spoken word area encompassing foundaries, and other performances, with visifactories and warehouses that tors stopping by Kilby Court for a have seen better, more purposeconcert or a food truck for a snack ful days. Along with the concrete or tossing a couple of beers back at silos, abandoned scrap iron Uinta Brewing Co.’s recycling yard and an auto beer garden, which body shop with guard will be constructed chickens, the industrial and out of pallets. railway corridor of Salt Lake The spaces, leased City that extends from 6th at $250 per month, South to 10th South, and require a six-month from 3rd West to I-15 also lease. Businesses can houses a Tibetan Buddhist also lease tents by the temple, an excellent restauweek, for $50. rant, an alternative music The Kentlands all-ages venue, a pyramid Initiative became James Alfandre with mummies in it, a cupinvolved with Salt cake shop, a couple art collectives Lake City after Alfandre, a former and, soon, Utah’s first net-zero Utahn who was living in the east, mixed-use building with onsite solar got online and sought urban planproduction. ning ideas from residents in Salt Dubbed the Granary District by Lake City, Atlanta and Washington, the Salt Lake Redevelopment D.C. He received the best crowdAgency, the area will garner more sourced response from Salt Lake attention from the broader commuCity. So he moved here to invest his nity this summer as the Granary energy in the Granary District. The Row project gains momentum. Granary Row project arose out of a James Alfandre is the executive planning charrette that Kentlands director of the Kentlands Initiative, held last year. a nonprofit urban planning group Although the Granary Row fixdedicated to reimagining neighbortures are temporary, Alfandre hopes hoods through crowdsourced and they seed a more permanent busilocal involvement. The group’s latness establishment in the district. If est project, Granary Row, emerges businesses housed in the containers this month. like what they see, Alfandre wants Shipping containthem to move to a brick-and-morers serving as tar location in one of the area’s micro retail space vacant buildings. and model micro It’s no accident that the shipping housing will move containers and pallet beer garden to the middle of might evoke an industrial feel. The 7th South district has a blue-collar heritage, between 3rd and one that the Kentlands Initiative has 4th West. Vehicles identified as “gritty, diverse, and will still travel on grounded.” Alfandre wants to keep the outside of the it that way. streets, but the center will be Jorge Fierro, CEO of Fierro Group dedicated to shopping and entertainment. “We’re going from a car priority where pedestrians are tolerated to a pedestrian priority where cars are tolerated,” says Christian Harrison, a Kentlands Initiative partner. Thursdays and Fridays from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., June through September, Granary Row will be open for business, allowing people to peruse and shop. People can also visit a cupcake shop, a bike shop or two artist cooperatives.
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