News reached us this week that you, a Portland, Ore.-based real estate investment firm better known as SKB, have bought Trolley Square and plan to make sweeping renovations.

No problem. We love progress here in Salt Lake City.

Just one request: Don't screw it up.

Enough of us share tender memories of Trolley Square that talk of a big redo shakes us up a bit. "We think we will do very well in terms of return to our investors," your CEO, Bob Scanlan, told The Tribune in announcing the $39.6 million purchase.

Yeah, we get the part about pleasing investors. But don't forget the rest of us. For a lot of us, hearing the words "Trolley Square" whips our senses back 30 years to a bar stool at The Pub. We are drinking cold beer and lapping up French onion soup. Incredibly, you can still get the same meal at nearly the same place only with a slightly different name: The Desert Edge Brewery at The Pub.

We remember the first Trolley Square Theaters, with the giant sepia-toned panels of classic movie scenes: Newman and Redford; Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh; Charlie Chaplin. We bought cork-soled platform sandals at The Chalk Garden. We remember that "Kitchen Sink" sundae - big enough to swim in - at The Ice Cream Store restaurant.

If you go back far enough, you'll run into people who recall the old trolley barns, which were eventually replaced by the National City Lines bus barns (UTA was yet to come). Any octogenarian with a working memory knows the forerunner of today's gleaming TRAX system was the trolley line running from Sugar House to downtown and points west.

The idea of adding a 50,000-square-foot anchor store and 150 condominiums to the mall is fascinating. But please, could you do it delicately?

Trolley has had its share of incarnations since developer Wally Wright and the late entrepreneur Izzy Wagner bought it in 1970 and began the task of converting bus barns to retail. It has had its share of owners, too. The place has gone from housing only small, locally owned boutiques to chain stores selling urban chic. Thankfully, there have been no Golden Arches, or a big dumb sports bar or ultrasound tests while-U-wait. Not yet, anyway.

Wright and another early partner in Trolley Square, John Prince, figure they waded into the retail and entertainment business during some distant, sweeter, more forgiving life.

"We could only open The Ice Cream Store and the movie theaters at first," Wright says. "Then as we got things done, we would open additional shops. It was learn as you go."

Says Prince, who owns 25 restaurants in Utah and the Northwest: "Away we flew, knowing nothing. I look back on what we did and the decisions we made, how we made them, and it's just amazing. The miracle is we didn't lose everything."

Prince owns Green Street, a private club that has waxed and waned in popularity as newer clubs make the scene. But it rarely hurts for business. Like so much of Trolley Square, the place is a comfort. You get what you're looking for.

Finally, if it isn't too much to ask, SKB, could you keep your mitts off the Trolley Square water tower and the lighted archway across 600 South? Wright scored the latter from the downtown where it spanned 200 South in front of the Capitol Theatre. As for the water tower, Wright tells me he had it modeled after an ornate antique bird cage he found in San Francisco and brought home to accommodate his pet magpie.

You can see our hearts are fragile here. Give us a little dignity, please. Save us from another Disney-esque, chain-store emporium.

We'll let Prince have the last word. He is describing his feelings for his own little bar, but it could apply to the rest of Trolley Square, as well:

"You own it for a while. You try not to screw it up. And then you pass it on to the next generation, with love."

hmullen@sltrib.com