Salt Lake enterprise to relocate to Murray after 119 years; constructing to be torn down

SALT LAKE CITY — A fifth technology family-owned clothes retailer that has been a Salt Lake Metropolis staple for over a century is shifting to a brand new location within the Salt Lake Valley after its downtown retailer was decided to be too broken by a 2020 earthquake to be repaired and might be torn down.

After weeks of privately letting prospects know in regards to the impending transfer, UWM Males’s Store — beforehand often called Utah Woolen Mills — formally introduced this week that it plans to maneuver. Indicators selling a “closing sale” at the moment are posted on the home windows of its location at 59 W. South Temple.

UWM plans to open a brand new retailer on the nook of 6100 South and State State in Murray, close to Trend Place Mall, that may open on Might 6, whereas its previous location might be phased out within the coming weeks. A farewell celebration is slated for Might 2 to have fun the enterprise, in line with B.J. Stringham, the enterprise’s president.

“It is a actually large transfer for us,” he mentioned. “We need to shut this chapter with excessive hopes for the long run — and we’re excited for the long run.”

Property Reserve Inc., which owns the eight-story constructing, advised KSL.com that the property — sandwiched between Metropolis Creek Middle and Temple Sq. — might be torn down later this yr over its seismic dangers.

Father and son Henry and Briant Stringham based Utah Woolen Mills in 1905, providing woolen items and males’s clothes from a base in downtown Salt Lake Metropolis. The corporate has remained within the household and inside the identical block ever since, shifting to its present location within the late ’70s as building of the Crossroads Plaza consumed the unique constructing.

The second location was spared when Metropolis Creek Middle building started within the 2000s, as crews constructed across the retailer to finish the mall over a decade in the past.

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Development was only one problem alongside the way in which. In a public letter in regards to the impending transfer, the Stringham household pointed to “numerous ups and downs” over the previous 119 years. The household enterprise weathered two world pandemics, two world wars, the Nice Despair and a number of recessions. Stringham mentioned the enterprise has had a few of its greatest gross sales years ever since 2022.

Nonetheless, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that rattled the Salt Lake Valley in 2020 proved to be the most important impediment — at the least when it comes to the corporate’s time in Salt Lake Metropolis. A structural engineering agency surveyed the constructing and recognized “seismic dangers” after the earthquake, in line with Dale Payments, a spokesman for Property Reserve.

In an announcement to KSL.com, Payments defined that the required repairs and seismic upgrades have been decided to be “value prohibitive,” so the corporate determined to tear down the constructing. By the purpose that call was made, UWM was the property’s final remaining tenant as Deseret Ebook — the constructing’s major tenant — had moved out in 2019.

It seems that it will likely be the second constructing to be demolished due to the earthquake. State historians famous that the Sears Home, a historic dwelling in Salt Lake Metropolis’s Liberty Wells neighborhood, was the one historic constructing broken extreme enought to be torn down after the quake.

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Whereas the Stringham household mentioned they’d hoped to maintain operating their enterprise downtown, negotiations ended with an settlement for the enterprise to vacate by July. Now they’re trying ahead to a brand new dwelling for the primary time in additional than 45 years.

“I do know it sounds trite, however it is not you, it’s us,” the household wrote of their public letter to Salt Lake Metropolis. “We have to be true to ourselves and transfer the place we’re the captains of our future. We’re shifting to the place we personal our property and might actually have management over our future, like we did when nice, nice grandpa and his son acquired concerned on this enterprise.”

The brand new Murray location has some advantages and disadvantages, B.J. Stringham says. It has about the identical flooring room measurement because the downtown location, higher parking and it is positioned to a different main Salt Lake Valley purchasing middle, however it does not have the identical quantity of space for storing.

That is why UWM Males’s Store is now holding a sequence of liquidation gross sales downtown as a result of it could actually’t convey every part to the brand new retailer. All objects are presently listed at 50% off, however the sale will attain as excessive as 90% off for any remaining objects after Might 13. Stringham mentioned the corporate could find yourself donating objects if there’s something left after the shop formally closes.

Demolition of the Salt Lake Metropolis constructing is anticipated to start later this yr. Payments mentioned the timeline is predicated on the “timetable of different main downtown building already underway,” akin to the continuing work to renovate Temple Sq. throughout the road.

Stringham mentioned his household hopes to make one other century’s price of reminiscences in Murray as they search to make the very best out of the scenario.

“I am happy with the legacy we now have and the legacy we proceed to construct,” he mentioned. “I feel a bigger marker of what our legacy is how we deal with adversity — and I am hoping to do this proud, too.”