This quirky and historic shopping mall in SLC is on an upswing — with even more stores on the way

Trolley Square began more than five decades ago as a one-of-a-kind reinvention.

Today, the historic shopping center fashioned out of red-brick streetcar barns in east Salt Lake City is seeing another rush of renewal, now with scads of residents added in the neighborhoods around it.

It has been 12 years since the quirky cluster of indoor shops, boutiques and restaurants under the landmark water tower by the corner of 600 South and 700 East got purchased out of bankruptcy by Khosrow Semnani, the Iranian-born industrialist, philanthropist and founder of EnergySolutions.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Pottery Barn is a big draw at Trolley Square.

The Semnani family casts that event as bringing the mall back to Utah ownership and saving the iconic tower, which a previous owner eyed for demolition. Time has also helped heal some of the effects of a mass shooting at the mall in 2007 that killed five bystanders.

Now, after pouring millions since 2013 into deferred maintenance, exterior improvements, earthquake safeguards, lighting and an extensive 100-plus camera security system, the shopping center is seeing a resurgence in retail leasing.

One recent Monday morning, new Trolley Square manager Taymour Semnani, son of the owner, strode the 53-year-old shopping center’s wrought-iron walkways and atriums. He pointed to many recent family-friendly additions — a fountain, a nursing station, a playground and coloring booth and a kid-size train circulating the mall’s second floor — while mentioning major retail chains he has recruited to the iconic property for its latest lift.

“We’ve signed more square footage in the last nine months,” said the younger Semnani, “than we have in the past 12 years.”

Khosrow Semnani, according to his son, is now focused on the work of several charitable foundations and trying to resurrect a project to build apartments on a parking lot just south of Trolley Square.

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Taymour Semnani, meanwhile, is managing the mall, its clientele and recruitment. After forays into other types of tenants, the younger Semnani said, Trolley Square is focused on filling open spaces in its 300,000 square feet with retail outlets.

The center’s latest model: tailoring a mix of shops and eateries to connect with young professionals and young families. It’s helping, too, that Salt Lake City’s resident population is growing and that several sizable apartment complexes have sprouted up around the block-size center.

New and old attractions

In a stark contrast for a shopping mall with high vacancy rates at times over the past decades, Semnani said, many of the long-empty spaces in Trolley Square are now on track to fill up.

Mall managers recently recruited Beaumont Bakery, with an outlet in Millcreek, to open a spot at Trolley, as well as a new coffee shop, Midway Coffee.

Kitchenware retailer Williams Sonoma, a longtime tenant, recently moved to an expanded and remodeled space, and another high-end vendor, furniture chain West Elm, is coming, too. A Kohler store, specializing in bathroom and kitchen features, also is poised to open soon.

Mall staples such as stationers Tabula Rasa, jeweler Payne Anthony and furniture retailer Pottery Barn, remain, as does Whole Foods. Familiar restaurants such as The Old Spaghetti Factory and Rodizio Grill are some of Trolley’s biggest attractions.

There’s now a suite of fitness outlets, including CorePower Yoga and Orangetheory Fitness, as well as an incoming climbing wall from Momentum. Semnani said Trolley has secured an electric bicycle supplier and hopes to recruit “a golf concept” as well. In terms of retail, the mall is emphasizing personal services and soft goods such as clothing, along with creating experiences and giving visitors a reason to saunter, with lots of ambience, visuals, art, walkway displays and a museum-turned-event space.

The music education chain School of Rock, built around the 2003 comedy film, is coming, too.

The shopping center recently hired a new commercial real estate broker, Colliers, in hopes of recruiting more national tenants to keep the expansion trend humming.

‘Running from extinction’

At the same time, Trolley Square is striving to achieve a balance between its new blend of tenants and classic mainstays.

Sean Bradley, proprietor of Tabula Rasa, strolled through his signature stationery store with an air of timeless charm one recent Monday. Well-coiffed and sporting a smart blazer, he reminded customers within earshot that he is “old school.”

Bradley is one of Trolley’s originals, starting as a Tabula Rasa employee then buying the business — before opening novelty store Cabin Fever as well. As shoppers perused Tabula Rasa’s fine cards, papers and fountain pens, Bradley nodded toward his breast pocket, embroidered with a wide-eyed Tyrannosaurus rex fleeing a hurtling meteor.

“It’s my spirit animal,” the shopkeeper sighed. “It’s a fossil, running from the extinction.”

The metaphor fits these days, Bradley confides, with “being a brick-and-mortar retailer, looking over your shoulder for the internet annihilation — but it keeps us going.”

“I’m always alive, just running as fast as my little T. rex legs can take me,” he said. “That’s emblematic.”

It’s also apropos for Trolley Square as it tries to build on its recent bounce.

Back to the future?

The shopping center’s features rank it among Utah’s most popular malls in the decades after Salt Lake City developer Wally Wright transformed its antique trolley barns into a version of San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square.

That popularity peaked and then declined into the 1990s and 2000s, with the advent of big-box stores and thriving suburban malls such as Valley Fair, Fashion Place and Cottonwood, as well as strong competition from downtown’s ZCMI Center and Crossroads Plaza.

Then came online competition. But a new lens has come into focus when it comes to retail customers.

Residential population in the core of Utah’s capital has nearly doubled in three years, with the tally of downtown residents alone jumping from 4,900 in 2022 to about 10,000 now, thanks partly to a boom in apartment construction. At its current rate, that number could rise to 14,000 by 2034, when the city is to host its second Winter Olympics.

The shift has pushed median household incomes for those living within a 12-minute trek of Trolley Square to $114,000 — and the median age to about 33, according to an analysis. Members of that generation often like an experience and a sharp sense of place, studies show, besides buying items.

“Their immediate capture area is very attractive and very dense,” Dee Brewer, head of the Salt Lake Chamber’s Downtown Alliance, said of Trolley’s location. “They will continue to feel that as things densify in the greater downtown area.”

Busy 700 East brings thousands of vehicles and potential customers past the shopping center every day, Taymour Semnani noted. What’s more, Trolley has a distinct character as well as a nostalgia factor for thousands of patrons who’ve frequented over the decades, particularly at the holidays.

“We do the best Christmas in Utah at Trolley Square, especially now that we have a train ride,” said Semnani. “But it’s not just Christmas.”

Rallying after tragedy

There’s other history at work. Trolley Square saw a notable decline in visitors after the 2007 shooting. That isn’t something the mall tries to avoid these days.

“It’s always going to be a painful part of our city’s history,” Semnani said. “I don’t view it as something that we should suppress. It’s always going to be something that we should rally around.”

The way community members supported survivors, “the way the city came together,” he said, “that’s all a positive for Trolley Square.”

Stuart Thain, a retail broker for Colliers, said many longtime patrons hesitated to visit in the immediate aftermath, yet he sees the latest attempts to fortify the historic mall as a way of restoring some of its past glory — in homage to so many memories.

“It deserves to be brought back,” Thain said, “to what it was before that happened — and that’s what we are trying to do.”

Along with new tenants, mall managers plan more family-oriented features as well as a sophisticated way-finding system to better guide patrons. There’s a carefully calibrated parking plan to meet demand with more than 800 spaces, as well as hopes that more customers living nearby will walk to the center.

“Trolley Square,” Thain said, “really has the ability to come back, too, and have the same momentum, energy and fun — if that’s the right word — for moms and dads and families to go there again.”