Salt Lake City is welcoming small businesses back to downtown. After years of empty storefronts, Mayor Ralph Becker will celebrate the opening of four new businesses along Main Street later this week that were all established within the last year.
Twelve thousand runners, walkers, and volunteers will fill library square tomorrow to help fight breast cancer.
The Sugar House streetcar line stretching from the heart of the Salt Lake City neighborhood to the TRAX station on 2100 South will be lined with green space, thanks to a vote of the city council Tuesday night. Council Chair Soren Simonsen, who represents the neighborhood, says the nearly $7 million dollars in funding will contribute to a grand vision.
Salt Lake City leaders are in the midst of discussions about the growing problem of panhandling. Downtown Alliance Executive Director Jason Mathis says several downtown business owners, social service agencies and Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank met earlier this week to discuss panhandling laws, how to help stop it and what services are available to those in need.
A local initiative decrying corporate personhood is gaining traction. Thousands of Salt Lake City residents have signed the Move to Amend petition, calling for a ballot initiative this November that would ask state and federal officials to uphold that money is not speech, and that only humans have constitutional rights.
Salt Lake City is partnering with five other Wasatch Front cities and counties to launch the “Wasatch Solar Challenge” after receiving a $400,000 Department of Energy grant aimed at reducing the cost of developing solar energy.
About 20 tents are now set up on a gravel lot east of the Salt Lake City Main Library, following the city relocating Occupy Salt Lake protesters to Library Square from Gallivan Plaza, where the city moved them from in anticipation of the events happening there this summer. Demonstrator Justin Kramer says they have more space and visibility in their new location.
The Salt Lake City Library is becoming a little more user friendly. This week, it adopted a new online catalog the library says will be easier and more fun to use. Library Senior Creative Producer Andrew Shaw says the Bibliocommons system will do all of the traditional things, like renew and place books on hold, along with several new additions.
Salt Lake City is back to fine tuning its regulation of electronic billboards now that efforts by state lawmakers to thwart the city’s proposed ordinance during the session were unsuccessful. Last January, the city put a moratorium on any new electronic billboards in the city, keeping in mind several recommendations by the city’s planning commission.
A strong advocate for downtown businesses in Salt Lake City was struck and killed by a Utah Transit Authority bus this morning. Police Sergeant Shawn Josephson says 82-year-old Richard Wirick, longtime owner of the Oxford Shop, was crossing 400 South at 200 East this morning at about 7:30 a.m. when the light changed as he was in the middle of the street.
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