"There is some time sensitivity, because a lot of these businesses in Sugar House have to be out of the spaces they're in now by midsummer," Simonsen said. "So at least I feel some urgency, and with the City Creek getting under way, and with the 300 South median project, I think there are some immediate impacts, and it would be worthwhile to move it along rather quickly."

Andy Fletcher, owner of Orion's Music of Salt Lake, 2106 S. 1100 East, said he thinks the grants will be much appreciated. However, he added, he doesn't think they address what he calls "the real problem."

"I got a loan from the city for $100,000, financed at 3 percent, when we were forced out of the 9th and 9th area during its redevelopment," Fletcher said. "I got it to combat what I knew would be a slowdown in business and an added expense in letting customers know where I was going and when we'd be open.

"The unfortunate thing is that we made our decision on where to move based on documents in the city record of the 'master plan' for the Sugar House area that the community council developed, and a lot of verbal assurances from the City Council that Sugar House was a community that they wanted to preserve — that it was an area they wanted to commit to promoting locally owned businesses and that sort of thing.

"Five or six months after we got the loan, the City Council went in and, without asking for comment from local business owners — only the property owners — they went in and changed the zoning to allow what is happening on the Granite block."

Fletcher argues that the council, by requesting community master plans and then straying from them, "has basically said that while, on the one hand, we support local businesses and want them to succeed, by their actions they've not given us any tools — they've taken away the tools — that we need to succeed."

Fletcher still owes on that $100,000 loan he got from the city, and Orion's Music finds itself negotiating the space between hard place and rock. Selling off his entire inventory would just cover the balance owed. But then what?

"By rezoning the area, they've put up a huge road block to my success," he said. "But now I can't sell the business, either, because nobody wants to buy a business that doesn't know where it's going to go."

For more information or to obtain an application, contact the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City at 801-535-7240.

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E-mail: jnii@desnews.com