Efforts to improve Salt Lake City’s Japantown Street continues a year after the city signed an agreement with the Smith Entertainment Group in July of last year. Through a collective of community leaders based out of the two Japanese American churches located on the street, Salt Lake City’s Japanese American community is setting its sights on future improvements.

Once a thriving ethnic enclave featuring hotels, pool houses and a tofu shop, most of Salt Lake City’s Japantown was demolished to make way for Salt Lake County’s Salt Palace Convention Center. Today a section of 100 South Street, renamed Japantown Street, is all that remains of the physical community, but Japantown community members have been working for the past decade to improve the street and increase its visibility.

“(I am) hopeful that Japantown would be able to be integrated into the Sports, Entertainment, Culture and Convention District, and also be a showpiece. That it could, on its own, be a destination for visitors: from out of state, as well as from outside the Salt Lake City area,” Lynne Ward, an elder at the Japanese Church of Christ, told the Nichi Bei News.

Ward said two simultaneous projects are now moving forward for the street. The billion dollar SEG project aiming to redevelop portions of the Salt Palace Convention Center into a mixed-use entertainment complex has promised around $5 million toward Japantown Street’s revitalization funded through ticket sales at the neighboring Delta Center arena, but the city has additionally agreed to move forward with its plans to renovate the street using a streetscape design concept the city approved in 2021.

“Even though the entertainment district came about, they decided that they’re going to move forward with the streetscape,” Lisa Imamura, a Salt Lake Buddhist Temple board member, told the Nichi Bei News.

Imamura, who sits on committees focusing on the streetscape renovation, said they are looking at the finer details of the street’s design and historical interpretation elements, as well as the street’s grade. With community input, the city is now conducting a cost estimate and will also determine how to fund the project, according to Imamura.

“Of that total cost estimate, they have committed currently to 40%, and so we’re not going to get the whole entire streetscape all in one go. And a lot of that also has to do with the development, with the entertainment district, because they don’t want to get into making something permanent that they may have to remove later on. And so they’re working around that as well,” she said. “But because they made this commitment to the Japanese American community, they do want to move forward with this.”

Imamura said once the estimates are done, it will take anywhere from six months to a year or more to get the project started. The city previously cited the streetscape design project would cost around $7.4 million and split into several phases of construction. She anticipates the community will also have to raise some of the funds to pay for the project in the future.

Ward said SEG’s plans for the Salt Palace have yet to get an update as the Utah Jazz owners focus on renovating the Delta Center for the Utah Mammoth NHL team. The developer proposed building towers that go as high as 600 feet and could especially impact the Christian church with shadows, along with additional congestion to the neighborhood.

Since releasing the draft plans early last year, however, Ward said she has not seen any detailed updates on SEG’s project since. The larger project also will not break ground until at least 2027, due to prior contractual obligations the Salt Palace Convention Center has through February of 2027.

According to the Delta Center, the arena, built in 1991 and renovated in 2017, was modified last year to host the NHL team and additional renovations began in April. Construction will add additional seating, bathroom capacity and a new parking structure outside.

Salt Lake City’s Community Reinvestment Agency did not respond for comment to the Nichi Bei News at press time.

Meanwhile the community continues to meet and organize. Marisa Eng, a member of the SLC Next Gen group, said the group has since rebranded into the Utah Japantown Advocates to encompass anyone in the community who wishes to get involved and not just the younger generations of Nikkei.

Tomo Hirai, Nichi Bei News

Tomo Hirai is a Shin-Nisei Japanese American lesbian trans woman born in San Francisco and raised in Walnut Creek, Calif., where she continues to reside. She attended the San Francisco Japanese Hoshuko (supplementary school) through high school and graduated from the University of California, Davis with degrees in Communications and Japanese, along with a minor in writing. She serves as a diversity consultant for table top games and comic books in her spare time.