Reinvigoration of Salt Lake City’s remaining Japantown provides new opportunities for the future while honoring and remembering the past.
There’s a street in downtown Salt Lake City serving as an urban archive with generations of stories written in brick and concrete. Near the Salt Palace Convention Center and the Vivint Arena, it stretches from Second to Third West on 100 South, bookended by the Japanese Church of Christ and the Salt Lake Buddhist Temple—the remnants of a once-thriving Japantown chronicling the Japanese American community’s 100+-year fight to save the celebrated space and preserve their history.
The Aloha Fountain Snack Bar, 1947
The latest struggle to safeguard this community space began in 2018, when a development dubbed the West Quarter project was proposed and included frontage on the southwest portion of what had come to be named Japantown Street. The massive multi-use high-rise buildings are designed to host commercial and residential spaces, and they had reserved their trash, recycling, and loading docks for Japantown Street—relegating a portion of the block to a back alley. With involvement from the State, Salt Lake County, and the city, the project also included millions in public funding for a large parking structure.
“For Japanese Americans in Utah, it was painful history repeating itself,” says Jani Iwamoto BS’82, Utah state senator and former Salt Lake County Council member. Iwamoto was a founding member of the Japanese Community Preservation Committee in the early 2000s and has advocated for Japantown since. A coalition of public, private, and community stakeholders—including Iwamoto and other U alums you’ll hear from here—collaborated to improve the West Quarter project and made plans to revitalize and strengthen Japantown, looking for ways to honor the history of the neighborhood while transforming it into a pedestrian-friendly hub for festivals, celebrations, and Japanese-centered businesses.