Plaza fight fades into history

As the years roll by, the controversy that engulfed the Main Street Plaza during the past seven years is likely to fade into the city's past, to be uncovered as an oddity by future historians. Salt Lake City has had a few of those already, such as the construction of the City-County Building, which led to bitter debates along religious and political lines in the late 19th century.

Back then, the Salt Lake Herald called that building an, "ornate, gingerbread, paste-diamond pretension." Today, it is viewed universally as a true 24-carat gem in the city's skyline — a rare example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture that is a valued part of the city's charm. Few, if any, remember the controversies surrounding its construction.

The same likely will be said of the Main Street Plaza. It always was intended to be a peaceful oasis in the heart of a big city. Now that the ACLU and the plaintiffs it represents have decided to forego any further appeals of last year's 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, it finally can become such.

Actually, it already has, as anyone who walks through it can attest.

Seven years ago, a city official approached The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (which also owns this newspaper) about the possibility of the church buying Main Street between South and North Temple streets and turning it into a plaza that would connect church properties. Neither the city nor the church ever envisioned the plaza as an opportunity for the church's detractors to use bullhorns to harass people on their way to and from the temple, but that soon happened after a court found that neither the church nor the city could ban free-speech rights along an easement through the plaza.

The battles that swirled around the sale, the subsequent protests, the eventual city decision to swap the easement in exchange for church property elsewhere and a lawsuit over that decision divided the community and led to many hard feelings.

We hope those feelings will soften now. They stand in sharp contrast to the plaza itself, which, like the City-County Building, is an asset any city should be glad to call its own.