SLC’s Granary shows the potential of wide streets
After covering CNU 21 about a week and a half ago I ventured down to Salt Lake City’s Granary neighborhood for the closing party.
The Granary is a crumbling old warehouse neighborhood that is probably best known as the location of Kilby Court and Frida Bistro. It’s also the site of a considerable crowdsourced revitalization process. You can read more about that on the website, or the Facebook page.
What that means right now, however, is that “Granary Row” has recently sprung up in the middle of 700 South between 300 West and 400 West. This is what it looked like on June 1:
When I took the pictures above the project was only partially finished, but I’ve passed by it more recently and it’s much further along. The wooden structure in the middle — actually a biergarten — had something of a roof last week. Also, all that parking in the penultimate photo had been replaced by shipping container retail spaces. It’s really fascinating to see.
And while people may have varying opinions on the shipping container aesthetic, there’s no denying that this is a fast and cheap way to get more development and more users into a space.
This spot officially opens to the public June 15 and will be open weekly for the rest of the summer. (Check the websites above for more details.)
This project has all sorts of great things going on. However, one of the things I like most is that it uses the unnecessarily wide streets for something productive. In this case, cars, bikes and pedestrians can all share the road. And at least while I was checking it out, there were no significant conflicts.
Not every street in Utah can do this, but there is almost certainly room for similar experiments elsewhere in Salt Lake City, Provo and other places.
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