Even with the threat of rain clouds looming ominously overhead, Salt Lake's Main Street Plaza was a popular place late Sunday afternoon. Families and couples strolled through the controversial downtown block, taking advantage of the intermittent sunshine to snap photographs of playful children and share a quick kiss near the reflecting pool.

Still others passed through the plaza, though, for entirely different reasons. A jogger maneuvered past the large family groups, obviously using the flower-filled area as a mere thoroughfare. A young couple did the same, simply taking the shortest route from their Salt Lake apartment to a nearby mall.

Those gathered downtown Sunday may not know it, but the status of Main Street Plaza is still a hotly contested issue. Eight years after Salt Lake City sold the block to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, constitutional challenges to the $8.1 million deal remain.

The case will return to a Denver courtroom Wednesday morning for arguments before the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union will try to convince the court that a Utah federal judge erred when he OK'd an arrangement in which Salt Lake City ceded its public easement on Main Street Plaza in exchange for 2.1 acres of land on the city's west side formerly owned by the LDS Church. The settlement also arranged for private donors to contribute some $5 million in cash to develop the Unity Center, a west-side community center.

The June 2003 deal was an attempt to resolve an earlier 10th Circuit ruling that as long as the city maintained the easement it must allow full expressive activities on the land as required by the First Amendment. The decision was a legal win for the ACLU, which filed its first suit over the Main Street Plaza in November 1999 after the church imposed significant restrictions on speech and behavior for plaza guests.

The organization's second lawsuit, filed in August 2003, alleges that the city, namely Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, hid behind the deal while kowtowing to the wishes of the LDS Church to turn over the formerly public easement.

Not only did the arrangement fail to solve the issue raised in the first Main Street Plaza case, "it raises separate free speech and Establishment Clause violations that focus on the city's willingness to carve up Main Street in order to ensure that the church does not have to share its space with individuals expressing other viewpoints," according to the ACLU's appellate brief.

ACLU attorney Mark Lopez said he will encourage the appeals court to look closely at the deal and the city's motivation for entering into it.