City Creek gets Dillard's

About 300,000 square feet of additional retail space — or about 100 stores — will link the three anchors, according to the church's preliminary plans. Now that the anchors are in place, Heckman said Taubman can recruit in force. However, don't expect announcements about other new tenants anytime soon.

"It's going to be awhile," he said "This project isn't scheduled to open until 2011. We won't really start announcing stores until, I'd say, the earliest would be about a year before opening. But that doesn't mean we won't be leasing them."

While Heckman said he understood the desire many Utahns have expressed for a super-glamorous department store — a Saks Fifth Avenue, for example — it just wasn't in the cards.

"The Salt Lake market, unfortunately, is just too small to fit those kinds of stores," he said. "If they came, they'd have to create their own distribution system and all of that. It's a much bigger thing than most people imagine."

And there's the Sunday thing. As of press time Wednesday, Bull was unable to say whether Dillard's had concerns about City Creek's policy to close retail operations on Sundays or whether the store has agreed to close on Sundays in any of its other markets.

"To my knowledge, our Salt Lake City stores and our stores nationwide are generally open on Sundays," she said. "I am not aware of our being closed on Sundays in any market."

As stated on the Downtown Rising Web site (www.downtownrising.com), which provides details and updates about the project, "in the new development, on property owned by the Church, all retail stores will be open six days a week. On property not owned or sold by the Church, individual owners can make that decision." The three anchor stores will be located on land leased from the LDS Church.

And then there's the redundancy thing. Arkansas-based Dillard's already has six locations in Utah at the Cache Valley Mall in Logan, the Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Newgate Mall in Ogden, Provo Towne Centre in Provo, South Towne Center in Sandy and Red Cliffs Mall in St. George. But that doesn't automatically mean more of the same at City Creek, according to Heckman.

"One, you've got a store that, while it isn't new to the market, it is proven in its market," he said. "Two, you'll have a new Dillard's — a brand shiny new one with its new format, which will be different from anything anyone has seen in Utah."

To Deseret Morning News readers like Max Chang, who wrote in an e-mail that "it's a bit disappointing to me as I hoped they would have brought in someone new and different than what we already have here," Bull had this to say:

"Come and take a look at us at City Creek Center. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

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E-mail: jnii@desnews.com