From Deseret News archives:
New plans for old factory
Originally the buildings were home to the Baldwin Radio Factory, employing 150 people in 1922 at high wages and building the world's most sensitive radio receivers and advanced sound amplifiers. Simultaneously, it was becoming the heart of post-manifesto polygamy as certain employees were laying out plans for what would become the Fundamentalist LDS Church movement in Hildale, Ariz.
Today, current owner Kevin Flynn is examining ways to incorporate the buildings he's leased to artists and performers into plans for a new East Millcreek Community Center. Rita Lund, East Millcreek Township's representative for the county, said the new community center could become "Main Street" or "downtown" for the township. By tearing down a fence, Flynn could make his property a major artery to the community center and Evergreen Park.
Flynn said he bought the property in 1996 and decided to convert one building into an office for his work as an electrical engineer and lease out the others to artists. The result is what he's named The Flynn Artipelago because the string of buildings resemble an archipelago.
"There's a real need for this kind of space," he said. "I have a waiting list."
Tenant Zach Hixson, a painter, said he's waiting to see what effect the community center will have on his work. On the one hand, he likes the seclusion of the Artipelago, but he also recognizes that more foot traffic could bring more recognition of his work.
The new community center is still "a ways out" but has been "fast tracked," said Leslie Riddle, chairwoman of the East Millcreek Community Council.
Riddle said she's excited to see the Artipelago incorporated into the larger vision of the community center because the council is interested in historical preservation. The flow of foot traffic could be a "win-win on all sides," said Lund.
Even though Flynn's vision for the project is only about a decade old, longtime tenant Craig Timm said that as far as he knows, artisans have always been in the old factory buildings. Soon after the radio factory closed, potters moved in, he said.
Hixson prefers the word "tinkerers" to artisans and said original owner Nathaniel Baldwin was certainly a tinkerer. Born in 1878 to his father's number two wife, he built his own bicycle and a steam engine as a child. After attending Brigham Young Academy, Utah State University and Stanford University, he returned to Utah to teach physics and theology at BYU. Fellow professor John Tanner Clark convinced him that ending polygamy had been a mistake — touching off a lifetime of sympathy and support for post-manifesto practitioners.
