This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Anthony Ferro first crossed the Atlantic and then much of America, working as a miner and a grocer before helping launch Western Macaroni Manufacturing Co. at 244 S. 500 West.
He soldiered on after one devastating fire reduced the place to ashes in 1909 and another in 1921 to become known as the "Pasta King" of the Intermountain West, credited for the region's early love of spaghetti.
But after a third major blaze in 1940, he was cooked. Western Macaroni filed for bankruptcy in 1942, and Ferro died two years later.
The no-frills factory building got a second life as a warehouse before falling into disrepair by the late 1990s. A former owner's son briefly lived there and hung a disco ball. When the roof deteriorated, 244 S. 500 West became the home and resting place of pigeons.
So it was — for the birds — when Artspace President Jessica Norie got a call from Salt Lake City Redevelopment Agency's Jill Wilkerson-Smith in 2000.
Would Norie's not-for-profit corporation be interested in developing affordable housing and small businesses in the space, which would be its third on the block?
Norie hesitated.
"I told her, 'Maybe if it was free.'"
Sixteen years later, Norie spoke to 100 or so city leaders and stakeholders huddled inside a heated tent Thursday to herald the first completed development in the RDA's ambitious Station Center project.
Artspace Macaroni Flats' apartments — 13 rented at 80 percent or less of area median income — and eight street-level business and artist spaces opened just after Christmas and are now 100 percent occupied, Norie said.
The project was described by City Council member and RDA chairwoman Lisa Adams as an "anchor" of the city's makeover of the two blighted blocks between 200 South and 400 South from 500 West to 600 West.
The city's vision for Station Center includes 500 apartments, 575,000 square feet of office space and 64,000 square feet for retail — a stone's throw from where people huddle outside in the open-air drug market around the 210 S. Rio Grande shelter. A few dozen paces from Thursday's ribbon-cutting, a man slept under a tarp at the corner where 300 South meets 500 West.
Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said that despite its readily apparent issues, the area can become "one of Salt Lake's great neighborhoods."
"There is no denying that the problems we are facing as a city — homelessness, affordable housing and addiction — manifest themselves to the greatest extent nearby," she said. "But this is also where we can most greatly demonstrate our resolve to find solutions together."
Biskupski has said the city's first affordable housing plan since 2000 will be released later this month.
The project is the not-for-profit corporation's third on the block and one of six on the city's industrial west side. Financing includes federal New Markets Tax Credits and state and federal Historic Tax Credits.
Twitter: @matthew_piper