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 will likely be torn down.
After weeks of privately letting clients know in regards to the impending transfer, UWM Males’s Store — beforehand often known as 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 will likely be phased out within the coming weeks. A farewell social gathering is slated for Might 2 to have a good time the enterprise, in accordance with B.J. Stringham, the enterprise’s president.
“It is a actually massive transfer for us,” he mentioned. “We wish 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, instructed KSL.com that the property — sandwiched between Metropolis Creek Middle and Temple Sq. — will likely 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 throughout the similar 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.
Building was only one problem alongside the way in which. In a public letter about the impending move, 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 finest gross sales years ever since 2022.
Nevertheless, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that rattled the Salt Lake Valley in 2020 proved to be the most important impediment — at the very 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 accordance with Dale Payments, a spokesman for Property Reserve.
In an announcement to KSL.com, Payments defined that the mandatory 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 E-book — the constructing’s main tenant — had moved out in 2019.
It seems that will probably be the second constructing to be demolished due to the earthquake. State historians famous that the Sears Home, a historic residence in Salt Lake Metropolis’s Liberty Wells neighborhood, was the only historic building damaged severe enought to be torn down after the quake.
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 residence 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 may really have management over our future, like we did when nice, nice grandpa and his son bought 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 dimension because the downtown location, higher parking and it is positioned to a different main Salt Lake Valley buying middle, however it would not have the identical quantity of cupboard space.
That is why UWM Males’s Store is now holding a collection of liquidation gross sales downtown as a result of it could possibly’t deliver all the things to the brand new retailer. All objects are at the moment 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 might find yourself donating objects if there’s something left after the shop formally closes.
Demolition of the Salt Lake Metropolis constructing is predicted to start later this yr. Payments mentioned the timeline is predicated on the “timetable of different main downtown building already underway,” similar to the continued work to renovate Temple Sq. throughout the road.
Stringham mentioned his household hopes to make one other century’s price of recollections in Murray as they search to make the most effective out of the scenario.
“I am pleased with the legacy we have now and the legacy we proceed to construct,” he mentioned. “I believe a bigger marker of what our legacy is how we deal with adversity — and I am hoping to do this proud, too.”
