Construction crews work on the new Pickle Building site in Salt Lake City’s Granary District, where a steel frame now rises beside the preserved Bissinger & Co. Hide Building—marking the latest phase in the area’s ongoing transformation. Image by Shawn Rossiter.

For more than a century, the Pickle Building stood along 400 West, first as part of Salt Lake City’s industrial infrastructure and, more recently, as a marker of the Granary District’s creative ambitions. On the morning of May 22, 2025, it was abruptly demolished—an act that erased a familiar structure and, just as quickly, brought into focus the tensions shaping the neighborhood’s rapid transformation. Recently, a ghostly shell of the former building has been raised up.

The building, at 741 S 400 West, dated to 1894, when it was constructed under the auspices of the family of Heber J. Grant, then managing a soap factory at the site. Over the decades, it cycled through industrial uses—most notably as home to the Utah Pickle Company—hence the name—but also as a soap and condiment factory. It remained part of the city’s working infrastructure well into the 20th century.

The Utah Pickle Building in 2002.

By the early 2000s, that shift was already underway from the inside. The arts collective TRASA occupied the building in 2002, using its industrial shell as a flexible, multi-level venue for exhibitions, performances, and community programming. Under the direction of Kristina Robb—now director of Salt Lake Gallery Stroll—the organization brought together visual artists, musicians, dancers, and writers in a space that was as provisional as it was generative. As 15 Bytes reported at the time, events like Emerging Women unfolded across months, layering installations with live performance. It was an early example of the kind of artist-led reuse that would come to define the Granary District, long before formal redevelopment plans took shape.

After TRASA, Studio Elevn, a local creative-media company under Ori Media, later proposed converting the Pickle Building—along with the adjacent Bissinger & Co. Hide Building—into a more formalized multi-use arts and community space. In 2017, that vision gained national support when Salt Lake City, alongside Main Street America, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and American Express, awarded a $50,000 grant to support rehabilitation efforts. As The Salt Lake Tribune reported, the project was one of just 25 selected nationwide.

Plans for the site were expansive: studios, coworking space, event venues, a rooftop terrace, and a public plaza, all aimed at transforming this stretch of 400 West into a creative corridor. The proposal aligned with broader momentum in the Granary District, where breweries, music venues, and small creative businesses had begun to cluster. Preserving and reactivating the Pickle Building was seen by many as a way to anchor that growth. As city materials and local reporting suggested at the time, the building had come to represent both a tangible link to the city’s industrial past and a possible foundation for its creative future.

That trajectory shifted abruptly in May 2025, when demolition crews tore down the building. As FOX 13 and The Salt Lake Tribune reported, the move caught residents and nearby business owners off guard, reducing what many considered a neighborhood landmark to rubble in a matter of hours. One Granary business owner described rushing to intervene: “I ran over and interrupted the demolition … but it was all pretty shocking,” he told FOX 13.

The demolition was part of a broader redevelopment effort by Blaser Ventures, known as the “Pickle & Hide” project. Plans for the site include roughly 140 residential units—more than 50 designated as affordable—along with retail space, pedestrian pathways, and a public plaza. Blaser Ventures president Brandon Blaser defended the decision, citing structural concerns; as The Salt Lake Tribune reported, engineering assessments—some tied to damage from the 2020 earthquake—found the building’s sandstone foundation and overall structure did not meet modern safety standards.

Despite the demolition, the developer has said it intends to reconstruct a version of the building on the same footprint. As Building Salt Lake reported, plans include salvaging portions of the original materials—brick, foundation elements, timber, and architectural details such as terra-cotta caps and the “Utah Pickle Co.” rooftop sign—to approximate the original structure’s scale and character. Earlier this month, passersby began to notice the skeleton for the new building. The project is expected to deliver approximately 22,000 square feet of retail space alongside 141 residential units across 2.5 acres, while the adjacent Hide Building is expected to retain its existing façade.

Even so, the demolition has introduced complications. As Building Salt Lake reported, the loss of the original structure could jeopardize more than $6 million in tax-increment funding tied to preservation goals. City officials have also noted that while the demolition was legally permitted, it likely voids prior design approvals, requiring revisions before new construction can proceed.

The loss of the Pickle Building marks more than the disappearance of a single structure; it interrupts a thread in the Granary District’s built history. For over 130 years, the building tracked the city’s industrial development and, more recently, its cultural reorientation. Efforts to salvage materials and reconstruct a facsimile may preserve elements of its appearance, but for many, that is not the same as preservation. As one neighborhood advocate told FOX 13, “We’re going to lose the story of our city if we allow it to be flattened … for the new quick pop-up money grab by developers.”

Update: the building late January, 2026.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.