Whitaker says there are also plans to fill a vacant Fred Meyer store on University Parkway that occupies about 150,000 square feet.

To help Best Buy finish its store, Whitaker said the city provided the company with a low-cost loan.

"We help (retailers) as much as we can, but on the other hand, we don't want to give special favors to one over the other," he said.

Cohen says there is often nothing city officials can do to fill an empty store, but he thinks a team of developers, real estate agents and city officials working together can have the most success.

"At the end of the day, it's just hard work," Cohen said. "We communicate with retailers and we remain active in the marketplace, but really you have to dig for those opportunities."

Sometimes big box stores stay vacant for years. According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, a Mississippi Wal-Mart bigger than two football fields stood empty for four years before it was demolished, and a Texas Wal-Mart remained vacant for 10 years before a flea market moved in.

To prevent big-box retailers from building one store and then abandoning it to build a bigger one, some communities have passed ordinances that limit the size of new stores, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Other towns require retailers to demolish buildings that remain empty for a certain period of time.

And some communities have found creative ways to fill empty box stores, including a bingo hall in West Virginia, a pharmaceutical lab in Wyoming, and a car dealership in Florida.

A small town in Oklahoma came up with a novel idea for an empty Wal-Mart that might come in handy in Utah: They converted it into a church.

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E-mail: jhyde@desnews.com