Utah Isn't a Flyover State Anymore Five Big-City Brokers Just Saw Why
Two days, five out-of-market retail brokers, and one conclusion: the Wasatch Front is having its moment.
I grew up in Seattle, so I know the look people from big coastal markets give you when you say you do commercial real estate in Utah. It's polite, but you can tell they're picturing a lot of open road between Denver and Las Vegas.
So when five very successful retail brokers from Phoenix, Tampa, Jacksonville, Charlotte, and San Diego agreed to spend two days with me touring the Wasatch Front, I wasn't trying to sell them on Utah. I just wanted them to see it. These are people who work in some of the fastest-growing markets in the country and don't impress easily. By the end of the trip, every one of them had stopped using the word "flyover."
Here's what we saw.
Day 1: Downtown Salt Lake City
The Temple and City Creek: a downtown about to get very busy
We started at the Marriott City Center and walked toward Temple Square and City Creek Center. For out-of-towners, the first thing to understand is the calendar.
The Salt Lake Temple has been closed since January 2020 for seismic upgrades and a full renovation. From April 5 to October 1, 2027, it reopens to the public for the first time since 1893. The Church estimates 3 to 5 million visitors, which works out to 20,000 to 29,000 people a day for six straight months. Local tourism officials estimate about $300 million in new spending downtown. The city is treating it as a dress rehearsal for the 2034 Winter Olympics.
Across the street, City Creek Center, with about 700,000 square feet of retail anchored by Nordstrom and Macy's, is still adding brands ahead of that wave. 2026 announcements include Design Within Reach, Läderach, Suitsupply and Sal y Limon Modern Taqueria.
The Granary District: a neighborhood built almost all at once
Next we walked southwest into the Granary District, where developer Brandon Blaser of Blaser Ventures gave us a tour of what may be the most ambitious urban infill story in the Mountain West.
Blaser has led the sourcing of more than $500 million in Opportunity Zone capital across nearly 50 acres of the Granary. His Post District, built with Lowe Property Group, replaced 13 acres of empty industrial land with 580 apartments, restaurants and offices, many in restored historic buildings. Traeger moved its headquarters into the old Newspaper Agency building. The whole district went up essentially at once. Without the OZ incentives, Blaser says, it might have taken a decade.
Right next door, Silo Park is the sequel. It's a $390 million, five-phase project on 8.2 acres, with about 740 units, a boutique hotel of roughly 150 keys built around the historic grain silos, and a central park.
What stood out to my group were the first-to-market concepts. Culinary Dropout just opened inside the historic Pickle Company building. Uchi, the Austin-born, Michelin-caliber Japanese restaurant, is bringing a 165-seat flagship later this year. And Texas-based Free Range Concepts signed the Rustic and Bowl & Barrel for Silo Park in 2027.
I'm not just a spectator here. I'm currently looking at the Granary for three corporate retail brands I represent, all of which would be first to market in Utah. That tells you how national tenants are starting to view this neighborhood.
At full build-out, the broader Granary vision calls for more than 6,000 residential units, 500,000-plus square feet each of retail and office, three boutique hotels, and five-plus acres of parks.
The night: a neighborhood you can feel
We did the Granary the right way, with drinks at Culinary Dropout. Then we went to dinner at Matteo, a local success story that outgrew its 900 South space and moved downtown into a 6,000-square-foot space in the former Olive Garden on 200 South. We finished with a nightcap at Van Ryder, the rooftop bar atop the Le Méridien.
That hotel sits in The West Quarter, which the Ritchie Group and Garn Development built to stitch downtown's core to the arena district. From the roof, you look straight down at the Delta Center, which set up Day 2 nicely.
Day 2: The Sports Economy, the Suburbs and the Mountains
The Shops at South Town: a mall reborn as a sports campus
The bus picked us up at Le Méridien and took us south to Sandy, to The Shops at South Town. Ryan Smith's Smith Entertainment Group (SEG), owner of the Utah Jazz and the NHL's Utah Mammoth, bought the entire 111-acre property in 2024. Woodley Real Estate's leasing team walked us through it.
For the Seattle crowd, the obvious comparison was Northgate, where the Kraken built their practice facility into a redeveloping mall. SEG's version goes further. The Mammoth Ice Center opened in 2025 with two NHL sheets, the Jazz practice facility opens in 2027 right next to it, and a 60,000-square-foot Intermountain Health sports medicine center follows in 2028. Two pro teams training under one roof is almost unheard of.
The best part is that SEG says only about 10% of the site is developed so far. The Woodley team told us there's room for multifamily and hotels, and they're working through plans for a complete reimagining of the mall itself. This isn't a mall with a hockey rink bolted on. It's the start of a new district.
After touring the Mammoth facility, we talked through Smith's plans downtown. The Delta Center is in the middle of a multi-year renovation to become a true dual-sport arena, and SEG agreed to buy 6.5 acres of Salt Palace Convention Center land for $55.4 million. That clears the way for a new plaza, hotel, and residential towers in a sports, entertainment, culture, and convention district.
A Swig stop (for science)
No Utah tour is complete without a dirty soda. As a Seattle native, I may never fully understand the craze, but I respect the brand. Swig now operates in 23 states and expects about 200 locations by the end of the year, and its out-of-state stores are outperforming its Utah stores by 40% to 50%. It's majority-owned by the Larry H. Miller Company, which came up again later that afternoon.
The Point: the one that stopped everyone in their tracks
We went to Draper near the BambooHR headquarters, which overlooks the former Utah State Prison site. The Point is 600-plus acres of state-owned land now being turned into a new city center. Scott Brady, Andy Moffitt and Garrett Bloomquist of Newmark Mountain West walked us through it.
Phase I broke ground this summer as a $2.3 billion private investment led by Lincoln Property Company, Colmena Group and Wadsworth Development Group. It includes a 5,000-seat Mountain America Credit Union Event Center, a 2,000-foot walkable retail street called The Promenade, and the first multifamily building with 363 units over 42,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. University of Utah Health is acquiring about 46 acres for a future campus. The long-range framework calls for thousands of homes, more than 2 million square feet of office and hundreds of hotel rooms.
The Newmark team said they're in conversations with multiple first-to-market entertainment concepts and restaurants. Part of the reason is momentum. The success of The ONE Group's STK and Sam Fox's concepts in Utah, including Culinary Dropout, where we'd had drinks the night before, has more high-caliber operators paying attention to this market.
These are brokers who lease major projects in their own markets for a living, and they were blown away by the scale.
CenterCal and the Southwest Valley
Lunch was at Aubergine Kitchen in Mountain View Village in Riverton, one of CenterCal's Utah properties. That let us talk through the CenterCal playbook:
• Lehi: The Collective at Morning Vista is a 134,000-square-foot center anchored by Utah County's first Whole Foods, opening in late 2027.
• Saratoga Springs: CenterCal has pitched a multi-hundred-acre new downtown for one of the fastest-growing cities in America. Saratoga Springs had about 1,000 residents in 2000 and 37,696 at the 2020 census. The city now says it's nearly 71,000 and expects more than 120,000 at build-out. In 2020, Utah's center of population actually fell inside Saratoga Springs.
Just west of Mountain View Village, and not a CenterCal project, The Commons at Herriman Towne Center is bringing Trader Joe's this fall and Target in 2027.
The southwest valley was farmland not long ago. Now national grocers are competing for it.
Downtown Daybreak: the Miller family's long game
Our second-to-last stop was Downtown Daybreak in South Jordan. The Larry H. Miller Company built The Ballpark at America First Square for the Salt Lake Bees, an 8,000-capacity Triple-A park that cost $140 million and was privately funded. It anchors a downtown of roughly 200-plus acres with a 75,000-square-foot Megaplex and an 800-seat performing arts center funded by a $25 million Miller family gift.
It's already working. Some of Utah's best local restaurants have opened locations there, and more is coming: a national boutique grocer is on the way, and yes, a Ferris wheel.
The Millers aren't stopping in South Jordan. They bought Real Salt Lake and the Utah Royals in 2025 and control nearly 50 acres around America First Field and Jordan Commons in Sandy. Plans there include downsizing the existing theater and adding a hotel and several new restaurants.
On Salt Lake City's west side, their $3.5 billion Power District is already going vertical with Rocky Mountain Power's new headquarters. They're preparing a shovel-ready ballpark site for a potential MLB expansion team, with plans for 4,700 housing units, 1.3 million square feet of office, and a restored Jordan River.
Park City: 45 minutes from downtown
We ended in Park City because I wanted these city slickers to understand the part of the pitch that no spreadsheet captures: world-class mountains 45 minutes from downtown.
We drove through Kimball Junction past the Whole Foods at Canyon Corners, one of CenterCal's earlier Utah projects, and up to Deer Valley East Village. It's the first new public alpine ski village in North America in over 40 years, planned for 800-plus hotel rooms, about 1,700 residences, eight hotels, and 250,000 square feet of retail and commercial space. The Grand Hyatt is open, a Canopy by Hilton just opened, and a Four Seasons and a Waldorf Astoria are both slated for 2028.
We finished the way any good Utah business trip should end: a drink at the No Name Saloon on Main Street, a photo in front of the historic Egyptian Theatre, and ice cream at Java Cow.
The Takeaway
Over two days, we saw a temple reopening that will bring millions of visitors, an old industrial district rebuilt almost overnight, a mall turned into a pro sports campus, a former prison becoming a new city center, national grocers racing into fast-growing suburbs, a baseball-anchored downtown, a potential MLB district, and a brand-new ski village.
None of these is a rendering waiting on financing. Almost all of it is under construction or already open.
These brokers came from Sun Belt markets that have defined American growth for the last decade, and they flew home with a new picture of Utah. If you haven't looked at the Wasatch Front lately, it's worth a closer look.
Tanner Olson is a commercial real estate broker with Legend Commercial in Salt Lake City.
