By LESLEY MITCHELL

| The Salt Lake Tribune

Denver » The Cherry Creek Shopping Center helped transform a once-struggling south-central area of this mile-high city into a bustling neighborhood of shops, restaurants, offices and residences. Even on weekday nights, many city blocks are filled with people shopping, eating and strolling along the tree-lined streets.

Mall owner and operator Taubman Centers Inc. wants to help engineer the same type of transformation in downtown Salt Lake City, which has struggled for years to attract a critical mass of people and businesses that are essential to a vibrant urban community.

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At a glance

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New City Creek views

pTThe center’s namesake ­­— a rendition of City Creek — now flows inside the development. See a gallery online at > sltrib.com/money.

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Taubman is partnering with the development arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to build City Creek Center, the retail portion of a sprawling mixed-use City Creek development in downtown Salt Lake City. It’s tapping what it learned at Cherry Creek and its other high-end malls, and calling on tenants such as jeweler Tiffany & Co., with whom it has spent years cultivating relationships.

The well-known real estate investment company plans to open its Utah center on March 22, 2012, with about 80 stores and restaurants nestled amid the church’s City Creek development, which also features offices, condominiums and apartments. Last week, Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Taubman announced that its first slate of about two dozen tenants, including Tiffany & Co., Coach and Michael Kors, had committed to the 700,000-square-foot center.

Some question, though, whether Taubman can fill an entire mall with tenants during an economic downturn — or whether there’s enough people in Utah who can afford to support the upscale shops and restaurants. But in an interview with The Tribune, Chief Operating Officer William Taubman said he has no doubt the company’s niche not only makes sense for Salt Lake City, but that its shopping center will help spark a revitalization of the area.

Whether it’s the retractable roofs that can be closed during bad weather to protect shoppers from the elements, the creek that runs through it, the two 18-foot waterfalls, the pond with live trout or any of the mall’s other features, Taubman said his company is aiming for a "wow" factor that will help bring people not only to visit the area but to live there.

"We’re creating a unique indoor-outdoor project in Salt Lake City," Taubman said. And although City Creek draws on everything Taubman has learned as one of the nation’s most successful shopping center operators, he said "there is not a project like this anywhere. This is not like anything that’s ever been built."

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Working with the church » As with Cherry Creek in Denver, Taubman owns the property on which it is building City Creek Center through a "ground lease," a form of ownership that’s like a long-term lease. (Neither the church nor Taubman will say how long.)

William Taubman said his company’s involvement with the church began in the early 2000s when the company was approached by Ron Pastore of AEW Capital Management, the real estate advisory firm retained by the church to help it figure out what to do at the time with two ailing downtown malls next to its Temple Square and church headquarters.

The church, while it has many business interests and a history in designing, building and property management, doesn’t have a depth of experience in shopping centers, let alone the luxury variety. It did operate Salt Lake City’s ZCMI Center mall — and later, Crossroads Plaza mall, after it purchased the struggling property and demolished both it and ZCMI to make way for City Creek.

Taubman said there were many pluses to building a new shopping center in downtown Salt Lake City, including the fairly small number of upscale retailers already operating in the area and the proximity to the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center and thousands of convention-goers and tourists, office workers and residents.

Unlike his experience at Cherry Creek, Taubman said early on it was clear that in Salt Lake City, the church wanted the stores in City Creek Center to be closed on Sunday.

Taubman pondered the Sunday closure issue carefully — City Creek would be the only property in the company’s portfolio not open on that day. But anchors Macy’s and Nordstrom agreed, Taubman said, and he agreed, too, given that there’s a segment of the population in Utah that likely won’t or doesn’t like to shop on Sundays.

Taubman wouldn’t say whether he has lost any potential City Creek tenants because of the issue.

One thing is for sure: Despite the Sunday issue, Taubman is having success getting some big retail brands, including some that had never committed to Utah stores before.

Cherry Creek is home to a number of retail brands that will make their Utah debut at the new Salt Lake City shopping center. Among them are Tiffany, Brooks Brothers, skin care shop L’OCCITANE, sunglasses retailer N3L Optics, fashion jeweler Swarovski and apparel retailer The Limited.

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Why there will be alcohol » Despite the church’s admonition that its members not drink alcohol, liquor will be served at some of City Creek Center’s restaurants, Taubman said. The church and Taubman "recognized that it was important to have a variety of types of restaurants at City Creek. We wanted some restaurants to be more upscale, and those restaurants require liquor as part of their overall business model."

Because the church doesn’t want to own property on which alcohol is served or a business operates on Sundays, the restaurants will purchase the property in City Creek on which they are located.

Taubman confirmed the addition of one restaurant, Texas de Brazil Churrascaria, a steakhouse that will open its first restaurant in Utah. Another restaurant, Cheesecake Factory, recently was issued a liquor permit for a store in City Creek Center.

Utah’s complex rules and restrictions about alcohol served in restaurants has been a recruiting obstacle for the company, Taubman said.