🠈 City Creek Center 🠊
City Creek Center
City Creek Center is a new shopping district in the heart of Salt Lake City opened in March 2012. The project was developed by Taubman Centers (NYSE TCO) and the Property Reserve division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints which owns most of the land involved in the development.
Wikipedia reports (drawn 3/31/2012) that the mall cost $1.5B and is part of a $5B development project in the heart of Salt Lake City, making the City Creek project one of the largest in the world.
City Creek reports that the development has more than 700,000 square feet of retail space spread across 23-acre on three blocks in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City.
ZCMI and Crossroads Mall
The City Creek Center occupies land that was previously occupied by the ZCMI Center and Crossroads Mall. These malls were completed in the mid 1970s. The Malls had the negative effect of pulling foot traffic off the streets and concentrating shopping in the Mall properties.
As of the Grand Opening, most of the shops in the City Creek Center are upscale chain stores with a few locally owned chain stores in the mix.
The construction of the Gateway Plaza in 2002 drew traffic back onto city streets and resulted in new shops on Salt Lake's downtown streets. Some fear that the Mall's skyway will have the effect of, once again, starving the city streets of pedestrian traffic; however, there is hope that the open air design of the Mall will stem that problem.
Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution
The City Creek Mall maintains the facade of the Salt Lake ZCMI center on Main Street.
Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution was established in 1868 by Brigham Young. The official claim behind ZCMI is that non-Mormon stores treated LDS shoppers unfairly. Zions Cooperative Merchantile Institution was formed to give LDS institutions an upper hand in commerce and members of the LDS Church were asked to boycott non-LDS stores.
This model of one big, well capitalized store became the template for the department store. Many historians name ZCMI as the first department store.
ZCMI thrived until 1990s when it started to have a dip in profits. In 1999, May purchased ZCMI and changed the name of the stores to Meiers and Frank. Mays was later acquired by Macy's [formerly called Federated Department Stores].
Directory Listings:
- Salt Lake Sites - Malls: City Creek Center