The 1,100 owners along with future patrons of the Wasatch Food Co-op are going to be delighted by Salt Lake’s first community-owned, full-serve grocery store—and it will only get better when they see what’s been preserved by developer Kathia Dang and her team as they finish development of Milk Block.
The project is a 6,000-square-foot new-build along with an adaptive reuse of the 16,000-square-foot commercial space, converting the original building’s previous retail use into a two-story mix of commercial office and retail spaces anchored by the Wasatch Food Co-op.
The project team has made painstaking efforts to preserve the barrel vault ceiling that was discovered during demolition—an architectural relic of the post-WW II construction. Dang described seismic upgrades, weight support, and more to restore the building, “and we couldn’t be more proud.”
“This had architectural integrity and was worth salvaging,” she said. “We wanted to produce a product that had interesting element and brings the building back to what it was.”
Much like the architectural character, the tenancy of the building holds plenty of character, too. Originally the O.P. Skaggs Market, the original building was expanded to include a drug store on the western side of the building.
Years later it became the Asian grocer Southeast Market, which closed its doors in 2022 after 23 years in business, setting the stage for redevelopment into the Milk Block—a mixed-use, multi-building development on Harvey Milk Boulevard (900 South) spanning from 400 East to Denver Street (450 East).
The 16,000-square-foot main building will be a mix of commercial retail and office space. At ground level, the Wasatch Food Co-op will operate its community-owned grocery store in 6,000-square-foot space, with patrons and owners able to look up at the lovely renovation and restorations undertaken by the architectural team led by Merry Warner from Structo Inc. and general contractor Will Petersen with Heber City-based Scale Construction.
Stephanie Buranek, Wasatch Food Co-op Board Chair of Feasibility & Planning, Legal and Finance, said that, along with the co-op’s full service grocery store open to the public, Wasatch Food Co-op will partner with local bulk food supplier Hello! Bulk to bring shoppers a bulk department when the co-op opens in summer 2025.
“Utah, and especially Salt Lake City, deserves to have interesting buildings with artistic relevance,” Dang said. She mentioned that the building ultimately lost 10,000 square feet of space to preserve the feature, “because we put value on architectural integrity.”
Building out the new development
Two restaurants, Mozz Project Artisan Pizza and Xiao Bao Bao, along with a to-be-announced women’s clothing retailer, will bookend the east and west sides of the renovated main building.
The second floor will be office space to house two non-profits, LGBTQ civil rights organization Equality Utah, and Simple Modern, who has partnered with LGBTQ youth and family services organization Encircle to lease out the remaining space upstairs. Dang mentioned the chosen office tenants were very intentional for the Milk Block, so named after Harvey Milk, gay-rights activist and the first openly gay elected official in California.
Much like Milk’s efforts to build community one neighborhood at a time, Dang said she was particularly inspired to build that community “one block at a time.”
“Everything about the co-op is about community,” Dang said. “And that’s what the Milk Block is all about.”
A new-build of 6,000 square feet on the east side of the development will house a florist and a bar concept on the ground floor, along with a live-work space upstairs. While the building will continue into the next year, Dang reported that commercial space is fully leased across both new and renovated buildings.
Long-time coming
It’s been quite the process—and that was before the project team broke ground for the next phase of Milk Block in 2022. After a multitude of meetings with the community council and hearings, the developer opted to preserve much of the historic nature of the building while also removing a ten-foot length of building space that borders Grace Court to the south for back of house operations.
As for theme, Dang joked that she wanted to ensure that the site didn’t look like a strip mall. It’s fitting, noting the energy that has defined Liberty Wells over the last few years with the 9-Line bike trail and a bevy of commercial retrofits and new businesses popping up all around the area. Milk Block already includes two businesses in operation on the corner of 900 South and 400 East—Greek small plates restaurant Manoli’s and Basalt Day Spa above it.
On the north end, Dang said visitors can look forward to upcoming art installations, as the developer is engaging with local artists working in various mediums.
While the originally named Wasatch Cooperative Market was founded in 2009, the renamed and rebranded organization continues its capital campaign continues to fill out its projected budget. Construction on the co-op and the remaining portions of Milk Block aim to wrap up in summer 2025.
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