But John Speros, owner of Lamb's Grill Cafe on Main Street, believes that The Gateway now is actually the center of the city. "Everyone considers Gateway downtown, because that's where everything moved," he says.

Even parade routes have been moved toward The Gateway.

For Speros, hope lies with the City Creek Center, a $1 billion-plus shopping, housing and office development that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is building on the now torn-down space of the ZCMI Center and Crossroads Mall.

"That will help redefine downtown," Speros says. "Then we'll have a more balanced downtown. It'll be spread over four blocks."

Downtown Rising

But other groups have more sweeping definitions for what will constitute the downtown of the future.

The City Creek Center is the first real project in Downtown Rising, a vision of the Salt Lake Chamber and its nonprofit arm, the Downtown Alliance. The plan calls for six downtown districts: Gateway, Salt Palace, Broadway/Arts and Culture, Temple Square, Skyline and Grand Boulevards/Hotel.

The remaining projects described in Downtown Rising — such as a large Broadway theater — are concepts right now. Some are under study by architects.

The business leaders who signed the charter for Downtown Rising agreed that downtown is not defined by geography but by issues.

"Essentially, this is a market," says Natalie Gochnour, the chamber's vice president of policy. "Markets don't cross the street and end."

Downtown Rising proposes a "green loop" of parks and trails, extending from the Jordan River to Liberty Park, and from Temple Square to 900 South.

The arts and culture district will extend to the University of Utah, to include its museums, Gochnour says.

The Downtown Alliance is funded in part by a city contract to administer services from a special property tax on businesses downtown. The taxes are assessed on an improvement district — roughly between 500 West and 200 East and North Temple and 400 South — established in 1991.

With the money, the Downtown Alliance promotes downtown to the outside world with events, Christmas lights, banners and kiosks.

Bob Farrington, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, says downtown's definition is changing, "and it depends on the context."

RDA and transit areas

The improvement district is different from the Central Business District project managed by the city's Redevelopment Agency. The RDA project is 100 acres roughly between North Temple to 400 South and 400 West to 200 East.