"This building is a great example of sustainability," Smith says. "Over 100 years old, still beautiful, adapted to a variety of uses." Working here, he says he feels the latent energy of its history. He loves sitting under the huge windows, his desk eight feet from the sidewalk, feeling close to everything that happens on the street outside.

As for the ZCMI warehouse, Jackie Skibine, director of development for Artspace, describes its history as somewhat less varied. The structure was built in 1905 with a railspur right down the middle of the building.

When the Artspace nonprofit organization bought the building in 1997, the ZCMI department store had long since constructed bigger and better warehouses. The bays within the original warehouse were being rented out as storage units. Of course the storage units were not exactly accessible to vans or cars, Skibine says. That particular incarnation wasn't working too well.

When Artspace bought the warehouse, it was with the intention of fulfilling their mission: to create affordable living and working space for artists and to revitalize Salt Lake's west side in the process. It was Artspace's fourth project downtown, Skibine says — following the Artspace Pierpont, the Artspace Rubber Company and the Artspace Bridge Project.

Unlike some of the other Artspace projects, there are no income restrictions on who can rent in the City Center. You do need to submit a portfolio, Skibine adds.

This space is always going to be saved for artists, she says. It won't be long, Skibine predicts, before the west side gets gentrified, and affordable housing becomes scarce. It's her job to make sure the people who took a chance on the neighborhood still have a place to live and work.

City Creek and other things . . .

The week before he was to come to Salt Lake City to talk about architecture, Paul Goldberger could be found at work in his home in New York City. His editor at The New Yorker magazine had e-mailed him some galleys and he needed to finish proof-reading his upcoming architecture column and e-mail it back before taking a phone call from the Deseret Morning News.

So many people do so much of their work from home these days, Goldberger noted. Fewer and fewer people have to be downtown to do their jobs. That's why the challenge for the modern city is to make itself attractive enough for people to want to be there.

"Cities have to become much more entertainment centers and cultural centers than business centers," he said. "In not many cities do people even shop downtown."

Goldberger was dean of the Parsons School of Design and he wrote for the New York Times for 25 years, during which time he won a Pulitzer Prize for his architectural criticism. He's coming to Utah to speak as part of the Utah Heritage Foundation's Preservation Conference.