While empty storefronts and emptier sidewalks continue to haunt this side of town, business leaders insist that Magna's main drag on 2700 South is on the rise.

A new light shines at the Art & Frame shop, open since summer, where owner Chester Seivert illuminates a front-window display of his oil artwork. Someday, he hopes to see painters, sculptors and other artists doing business on the block.

"I leave the light on at night all the time," he said. "I just feel like it goes toward revitalization. My theme is: Let's light up historic Magna Main Street."

Across the street, the newly reopened Empress Theatre sparkles on show night for live performances of "Midsummer Night's Dream" and, soon, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."

Yet business has drifted south to 3500 South - arguably, the new center of town. Locals wonder out loud whether historic Main has any chance to revive or to thrive in modern-day Magna.

Keith Brower, a barber, has lived in the unincorporated west-side township for more than two decades. He doubts there is "life to be had" on Main Street when business seems to be blossoming farther south.

There, fast-food chains, such as McDonald's, Subway and KFC, have sprouted. A Smith's grocery store lot is clogged with parked cars and vehicles stream in an out of the nearby Zions Bank.

"My heart aches for the people trying to make a business down there [on Main Street]," Brower said. "They don't have the foot traffic to make it happen."

Magna Times Editor Colin Douglas - whose newspaper digs are on Main Street - said the community has to find some way to bind those two business districts.

"Somehow," he said, "a connection needs to be established between old Magna and the new."

When Main reigned

Historic Main Street wasn't always awash in shuttered stores.

The west-side drag once sizzled with shops, eateries and entertainment, was home to two theaters - the Gem and Empress - a J.C. Penney and a Rexall Drug.

Grocers flourished. So did pubs, furniture stores, a bakery and a car dealership.

"This whole street was nothing but commercial," said lifelong resident Laura Jo McDermaid, now president of the Magna Chamber of Commerce.

What kept cash registers clinking was the copper industry, which served for decades as the town's economic engine on the mountainside to the west. When Kennecott prospered - as it did during the copper-hungry climate of World War II - so did Magna. But Main Street met hard times in the late 1960s and early '70s as retailers began searching for more floor space. The arrival of Valley Fair Mall in West Valley City accelerated that exodus, old-timers say, leading to the departure of anchors such as J.C. Penney.

And so downtown decayed.

But business backers see change on the horizon. They point to Art & Frame and industrial contractor Holmes and Holmes as new move-ins. They also speak of a soon-to-surface bakery, the relocation of a county library branch and the 2008 opening of the Magna Ethnic and Mining Museum.

Historic Main is coming back, McDermaid insists.

"We realize it can't be the commercial center it was," she said. "But it's going to be small individual businesses that are going to have quite the charm."

Suburban shift

Twenty minutes from Utah's capital, Magna is quickly turning from a rural township into a sliver of suburbia.

Old brick bungalow neighborhoods now stand beside modern subdivisions surrounded by white vinyl fencing. Open fields that once separated the township's eastern edge from Redwood Road have disappeared beneath the westward sprawl of homes and businesses.

And, someday, Kennecott - of Daybreak fame in South Jordan - plans to develop an expansive upper-scale community to the west, nestled in the nearby Oquirrh Mountains.

But west-siders don't seem to mind.

Just ask hairstylist Joyce Hunter, who moved to Magna in 1969. Customers don't gripe about growth, she says, only about traffic. Some even hope for better business and higher property values as so-called "McMansions" appear on the west bench.

While the community isn't as close-knit as years past, the hairstylist said it remains a piece of small-town America.

"It still has the small-town mentality," she said, receiving an affirmative nod from her 94-year-old customer, LuEtta Swensen - a Magna resident since 1932. " 'You're my neighbor, and I'm watching out for you. You're my neighbor, and I care about you.' "

But Magna is swelling. Township representative Greg Schulz said the community has grown by 1,000 homes since the 2000 census. The population - which numbered 8,900 in 1960 - has surged to nearly 25,000, according to a 2004 census estimate.

"They're expanding," said Diana Stephenson, a longtime Kearns resident who sat in the Cyprus High bleachers watching her grandson play football. "But they aren't crowding the old out. They're not knocking the old buildings down and building sky-rises. They are blending the old with the new, and it's working out."

The sinking school

Magna has knocked one monument down, however, and built a new one in its place.

Cyprus - once the only high school west of the Jordan River - was torn down in the early 1980s when groundwater problems caused the building to sink.

The building had bulged with history. It had served west-siders since 1918, making Cyprus Pirates out of youngsters who, today, would feed into Granite, Hunter and Kearns high schools.

Doris Pierson, a 1961 graduate and school secretary, still remembers having to "say goodbye to a lot of friends" when Granger High split the school population in the late 1950s.

Cyprus opened on the heels of World War I, offering grades seven through 10. Officials added a new grade each year until 1921 when the school graduated its first class.

That year, Kennecott's predecessor, Utah Copper, forged the first link of a chain - dedicated to Cyprus alumni with inscriptions of each graduation year - that would grow with each class until 1983. Those copper links still exist today.

But a new school now stands on the property.

Luanne Coon, a 1970 alumna who serves as Cyprus' yearbook adviser, said her alma mater has become an "icon" and a source of loyalty for the west-side community.

"People naturally gravitate to the school," she said.

Peddling pork

in lean times

If only Main Street could tap that foot traffic.

While shoppers remain sparse along Magna's old commercial corridor - now spruced up with decorative lamp posts, wide sidewalks and newly planted trees - at least one business has brought customers downtown for decades.

Colosimo's Market has sunk its roots 80 years deep in Magna soil. It has survived strikes in the copper industry, the decline of Main Street and the arrival of megagrocers such as Smith's.

Instead of declining, this three-generation market has become a staple for sausage lovers. Buyers come from all over the country and sometimes beyond, owners say. Recent customers included a New Yorker and visitor from Italy.

Even with the shuttered shops, the Colosimos say they wouldn't leave Magna.

"Everything you would want in good people, you find out here," said Dan Colosimo, whose family owns the store. "That's why we stayed."

So while walk-up traffic remains thin along historic Main - the Art & Frame shop has sold just two paintings and a frame job since opening - Colosimo's Market shares the Chamber of Commerce's vision for downtown.

"The empty buildings are deceiving," said sausage-shop owner Ernie Colosimo. "They're going to fill up. I'm sure."

jstettler@sltrib.com

About the series: Each month, The Salt Lake Tribune profiles one of Salt Lake County's six townships. Previously: Emigration and Copperton. Still to come: Millcreek, Kearns and White City.