After decades of existing on Redwood Road, a swap meet bids a final, resigned farewell.

West Valley City • It’s Dec. 8 — two weeks before the Redwood Drive-In Theatre and Swap Meet closes — and the air is not only heavy with Utah’s winter inversion, but also with a sense of resignation from those who consider this property a second home.

Sundays are typically the busiest day here, and vendors continue to brave the cold to sell what they can, while they can. It’s quiet, though, aside from a few booths that sell speakers and are playing music from them.

“Right now, a lot of the vendors are just sad,” said Cristian Gutierrez, the organizer behind a campaign to save the swap meet. “Honestly, there’s not much we could feel but just sadness.”

Soon, the music will stop and the community will be scattered, at least temporarily. The weekend before Christmas marks the final days of the swap meet’s existence as the property is set to be redeveloped into housing.

This closure is not like when a mall or department stores closes. There are no high-energy commercials announcing closeout deals, no banners alerting passersby to a going-out-of-business sale, no sign-twirlers standing on the streets.

Instead, this place, long held as a cultural landmark and commerce hub for many, will simply fade away. Many of the stalls have already shuttered. All sales are final.

The quiet end to the swap meet at 3688 S. Redwood Road is a stark contrast to the monthslong impassioned saga to defend the drive-in property from development.

For more than 60 years, the drive-in has hosted this market, which sees thousands of visitors every weekend.

Wais, who goes only by his first name, has been one of hundreds to set up shop here. In the waning days of the market, he’s trying to get rid of as much stock as he can, slashing prices because he can’t afford to keep boxes of clothing.

“My storage is almost full,” he said. “What the heck am I going to do with all of this stuff?”

The end of a lengthy saga

Over the summer, Utah homebuilder EDGEHomes asked West Valley City to rezone the land for housing after the property’s current owner, California-based DeAnza Land and Leisure Corp., said the drive-in wasn’t profitable. DeAnza wanted to sell the land to EDGEHomes for development.

The request immediately sparked pushback from dozens of community members, but in September, the West Valley City Council signed off on the change.

For the past six months, vendors have spoken passionately at meetings about the significance of the swap meet, sharing stories that transcend generations, amplify the importance of community and highlight opportunities for entrepreneurship.

One father raised his family on income from his sales after being politically exiled from Guatemala, his daughter shared. A teacher spoke on behalf of 150 students who opposed the rezoning. An elderly woman pleaded with city officials not to “discard people like old pieces of clothing.”

Wais has accepted the market’s fate. He spoke up at meetings, too, though it didn’t do much, he said. The deal between a private landowner and prospective buyer was already in motion.

“The two parties agreed, you know, one buy and one sell,” he said with a shrug. “We’re in the middle, and we don’t have much to say. It was great while we could keep this place open for this long … That’s a part of business, throwing a curveball at you.”

After everything, Gutierrez, who has become a figurehead in this community, said he feels “very disappointed” — particularly with the elected officials of West Valley City because they not only “voted against us for the rezoning,” but have “not reached back to us” about possible places for the market to go.

Vendors, Gutierrez said, feel they “haven’t been listened to by [the] City Council or any political figure.”

At the September council meeting, West Valley City Mayor Karen Lang said there have been “numerous businesses that have left the city ... but as a council, it’s not our responsibility to find them a new place or help them.”

In a statement this month, West Valley City spokesperson Sam Johnson said the city’s economic development staff “is always looking for opportunities to retain and attract businesses.”

“With that said,” Johnson’s statement continued, “we do not know of any available land that fits the expectations and needs of the swap meet organization.”

Will the swap meet live on?

Gutierrez, now the president of the newly established Redwood Road Chamber of Commerce, said he is working on finding a new place for the market to reconvene. He said there have been discussions with different venues like a Salt Lake Community College campus and the Utah State Fairpark.

The swap meet’s sheer size, however, makes relocating complicated.

“The magnitude of this, which is 500 vendors,” he said, “is a huge responsibility, even for any event [space] to help us out.”

The goal is to open somewhere else by March, Gutierrez said.

“It’ll continue,” he said. “I know it won’t be the same, but we’ll create something bigger, something better, and something that our next generation can enjoy.”

While the fight for the Redwood Road swap meet is over, Gutierrez said the rallying that happened around it helped “create a movement that united us.”

Still, he said, saying goodbye to the drive-in is bittersweet, especially when he thinks about the community that’s been built on its pavement.

“It’s a community that their grandfathers, grandkids, kids, have been coming [to], and every year they’re expecting to come back,” he said. “Now that it’s gone, all those memories that people could have and keep [creating] every year are all gone.”