Main Street mainstay starting to re-emerge

SALT LAKE CITY — At least twice a day, Carlton Christensen makes the block-and-a-half walk between the Regent Street parking structure and his office at Zions Bank on the corner of Main Street and South Temple.

Along the way, the Salt Lake City councilman passes the site of countless childhood memories. Talking about them brings emotion to his deep voice.

Amid the dozen or so downtown construction projects under way as part of City Creek Center, a Main Street mainstay is starting to re-emerge.

The historic ZCMI facade is being put back into place as the storefront for Macy's, an anchor of the 20-acre retail, residential and office development of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"For me, it's a personal thing," Christensen said of the ZCMI facade, a staple of downtown since the 1870s. "My father worked for ZCMI for about 26 years before he died."

Christensen recalls spending his days working with his father, stocking shelves and working the old freight elevator "that you had to move by pulling on the cable to start it."

"Having the facade come back and be restored in an integrated fashion is exciting for me," he said. "It's a huge element in my growing-up years."

Crews have been reassembling the facade since July, though it likely will be early next year before it's complete, said Dale Bills, spokesman for City Creek Reserve Inc., a development arm of the LDS Church.

"The steel framework on the east side of Main Street is complete, and technicians are now attaching restored elements of the original facade," Bills said.

Several of the facade's familiar pillars already are in place, and the rest of the cast-iron front will go up "concurrently with construction of the core and shell of the Macy's store," Bills said.

The three-story ZCMI facade was carefully disassembled in fall 2007 and was put into storage so the old Macy's building could be demolished. The new store is being built about 25 feet to the north at approximately 15 S. Main.

The facade was part of the original Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, which was founded in March 1868.

"I think (reusing the historic facade) is a smart move by Macy's," Christensen said. "This is America's first department store. … You look at all the department stores nationwide and how those have evolved, and to have the first one here in Salt Lake … is an important element that's now part of their heritage."