Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — An unfinished townhome project sits seemingly abandoned next to the Leal home on Salt Lake City's west side.
Across the street, several homes sit boarded up and fenced off, awaiting demolition, Jose Luis Leal and daughter Alexandra Leal Vergara say, so the land can be redeveloped.
Still, a handful of single-family homes remain on Chicago Street, a relatively quiet roadway tucked between North Temple and South Temple a short drive west of the I-15 corridor and downtown Salt Lake City. And, even if redevelopment is encroaching — literally overshadowing his home, Jose Luis Leal, who's lived in the older neighborhood since 2002, plans to stay put. "I would fight as long as I could," he said.
Leal Vergara, too, is adamant. For one thing, she grew up in the home and has an emotional attachment to it. As a child, everyone on the street knew each other, and she'd play with neighbor kids. Moreover, even if they did sell, it would be hard to find a new home at an acceptable price, she suspects, given the dynamics of the current housing market.
"Why would we want to move?" she said. "We're just going to stick it out."
Call them the west-side holdouts. As redevelopment pressure mounts, as older homes are razed to make way for townhomes and apartment buildings to meet surging housing demand, not everyone on Salt Lake City's west side is embracing the change. A block or so away, the operators of El Asadero, a mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant, have faced their own woes stemming from construction of an apartment building next door. They had faced pressure to leave by the original developer, though, the project has since been bought out, and the new developer says El Asadero may remain.
At any rate, the Rose Park Brown Berets, a west-side political group formed "to empower our community," has taken up the cause of advocating for the Leal family, the El Asadero operators and other long-term area residents. As outside developers eye the zone, the Brown Berets worry the residents of the working-class area — a mix that includes Latinos, Blacks and whites, Leal Vergara says — will be edged out and left scrambling for housing.
"Displacing these families means erasure of history, community and further perpetuates gentrification on the west side of Salt Lake City. Families on Chicago Street are low-income people of color who have built their homes from the ground up," the Brown Berets said in a statement. "With rising housing prices, families like that of the Leal family have no means of moving and, furthermore, will not allow unaffordable housing to displace them."
The Leals are just one family on one street in the sprawling west-side area. But they offer a peek into the pressures some in the area face and the backlash the push to build has created, at least among some. One block to the west of the Leal home on 1000 West, several homes are vacant and boarded up, apparently ahead of redevelopment, says El Asadero operator Margarito Parra, who has seen the changes from his restaurant just across the street.
Emeril Avenue to the east of Chicago Street has also seen change — razing of numerous homes to make way for townhomes, according to Leal Vergara. Indeed, the change on Chicago Street brought on by the sale of homes and departure of their tenants has had a dramatic impact, though it hasn't tempered her desire to stay put. "It was pretty full of life. ... Now it's kind of desolate, and it's a little saddening to see the state of the street," she said.
Leal Vergara, who has lived at her Chicago Street home since she was around 6 months old, said her family has been approached several times to sell. She lives in the home with her parents, grandmother and two younger siblings. They've made counter offers, but the would-be buyers would never meet their price. Along the way, the owners of the six properties to the south of them sold out, however, leading to the partial construction of a 30-unit, three-story townhome complex, now halted, according to Leal Vergara.
Aside from laments over the seeming snail's pace of construction, Leal Vergara questions whether the rent at the new housing complex, when complete, will be affordable to the working-class mix that has traditionally called the neighborhood home. At any rate, the pressure to sell that her family had faced seems to have eased. "I think everything's under control. We haven't had any realtors or developers come by in a while," she said.
Her dad, a landscaper worries his neighbors "are going to get tired and going to have to sell." He, though, is resolute about staying, in part given his longevity in the location and the work he and his family have put into the place in making it their home. "I have good memories in the area," he said.
