Often-noisy S.L. plaza fight ends quietly after 7 years

About seven years ago, Stuart Reid hatched a plan to sell part of Main Street to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was the blocklong stretch of Main from South to North Temple streets.

The church wanted to close it to vehicle traffic and create an urban oasis appropriate to the center point of many of its most important Salt Lake sites.

And it wanted to restrict activities and speech that it deemed contrary to the tranquility it sought for the area, a position some protested as an infringement on their rights to free speech.

Reid, who at the time was Salt Lake City's economic development director, thought the sale would encourage tourists to saunter down Main Street and spend money in downtown shops. He did not expect the ensuing furor that split the capital city along religious lines and resulted in a six-year legal battle.

That legal battle ends today when the appeal deadline from an October court decision passes. In that decision, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city acted appropriately in trading its easement — and the accompanying free-speech guarantees of the U.S. Constitution — for several acres of church property west of downtown. The ACLU and the plaintiffs it represented will not petition the U.S. Supreme Court for a hearing on the case, choosing instead to let the deadline pass quietly, said Dani Eyer, executive director of the ACLU's Utah chapter.

Both sides in the long legal battle expressed gratitude that it has ended.

LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said church leaders are glad to see the legal tug-of-war resolved. ACLU officials said they believe the controversy created a forum for discussion of issues important to many Utahns on both sides of the issue.

Today's deadline will pass after two lawsuits, two trips to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals and thousands of hours of work by attorneys and elected officials. The ACLU decided not to pursue an appeal for several reasons, including the shifting ideology of the Supreme Court this fall, national ACLU legal priorities, and "whether going forward would actually hurt us," Eyer said.

"I guess the question I have at the end of it is, did this exacerbate the religious divide or was it an interesting civic dialogue?" Eyer said. "Instead of talking about basketball, people talked about the meaning of the Constitution and the value of the First Amendment (and) whether there is value in protecting a majority from criticism. I said it over the years, but I still maintain that this community conversation was healthy.