Glad to keep Nordstrom

The announcement that Nordstrom will remain on Main Street ought to give everyone in Salt Lake City a huge feeling of relief. It also ought to make them grateful to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which once again has shown its commitment to downtown.

The church, which also owns this newspaper, has just solved a huge problem for the city. The City Council had refused to change zoning laws to allow Nordstrom to move to the Gateway, mainly because council members didn't want to erode the retail potential for Main Street. Nordstrom, meanwhile, had insisted it would leave town completely if it was not allowed to move. Now, although the church has yet to reveal its plans for the blocks south of Temple Square, it clearly has made an offer grand enough to make Nordstrom officials forget about their threats and change their plans.

And it all happened without the use of any public money.

Perhaps the best byproduct of this announcement is that it returns a sense of stability to the downtown retail market, which had been in a sort of limbo for the past few years, wondering what the future would hold. Nordstrom's decision ought to help a number of smaller retailers make decisions, and it ought to end up being a positive thing for all downtown shopping areas.

The church has hired Taubman Centers as its project developer. No one is yet talking about the details Taubman has worked out, but Nordstrom's president, Blake Nordstrom, described the plans as "fresh" and "urban." "It's not a New York or Chicago or Seattle thing. It's Salt Lake," he was quoted in this newspaper as saying.

That's exciting to hear. Downtown retail, whether on Main Street or at the Gateway, has to compete for tourist dollars as well as for the dollars of metro Wasatch Front residents who have plenty of suburban shopping centers from which to choose. The city has to offer something unique; something worth the long trip.

Nordstrom, an upscale retailer with plenty of experience marketing itself nationwide, wouldn't have agreed to this unless it felt certain of success. That's sends a powerful message about what to expect.