"It was actually built as an opposition to the Temple," Scheer says. "It was built by someone who was not LDS. It was kind of an interesting counterpoint to the northern part (of downtown)."

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Ted Wilson reminisces about Salt Lake City's old downtown in its heyday.

"I remember coming down as a boy," he says. "I'm 68 years old. I saw it at the best times. It was almost like being on the streets of Manhattan."

The downtown Wilson faced when he became mayor in 1976 had declined, he says. Interstate 15 had partitioned the city. People had fled to the suburbs. And large indoor shopping malls that cropped up in the suburbs gave people reasons to avoid downtown.

"Now we're more into streetscape and walking around in the ambience of outside, but back in the '70s and early '80s, people used to go to the malls to jog in the morning," Wilson says.

Wilson urged opening Crossroads Plaza and the ZCMI Center to revitalize shopping downtown. "They were immensely popular for 25 years," Wilson says. "And then we had The Gateway built, and most of Main Street shut down."

The Gateway

During the 1990s, city leaders searched for places for Salt Lake City to grow.

The city didn't want commercial development to "creep toward the University of Utah," says Russel Weeks, public policy analyst for the City Council. "The reason for that is there was a viable residential neighborhood between 200 East and 1100 East where people still lived."

City officials devised a plan under then Mayor Deedee Corradini in 1996. The idea was to "consolidate rail lines in the area in what was an old rail yard," says Weeks, who has worked for the city for 14 years. "It allowed the state of Utah to shorten the freeway viaducts and create an economic development that is known as The Gateway."

The Gateway area extends from 900 South to North Temple and from I-15 to 400 West. It's about 650 acres, and within it is the sandstone-colored, 40-acre development by The Boyer Co., which opened Nov. 1, 2001.

Jake Boyer, president and chief executive officer of The Boyer Co., remembers taking heat for robbing Main Street of business: "I think it's just like when the Delta Center was first built, west of what was then considered downtown."

His company believes that The Gateway area has always been downtown, he says. "Downtown is larger than one street. The only downtowns that have only one main street are really small cities."

Bigger downtowns have different districts, Boyer says, and Salt Lake City is evolving from a Main Street-centric downtown to a multidistrict downtown.