This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Downtown Salt Lake City's beleaguered and beloved Flower Patch is gone.

Tuesday's demolition marks the end of the two-decade David-and-Goliath struggle between Grand America Hotels & Resorts and the little flower shop founded by Greg Parrish.

The Flower Patch and an adjacent parcel were at the heart of the protracted fight starting in the mid-1990s, when Parrish and partner Stuart Nelson refused to sell and make way for oil and hotel billionaire Earl Holding's plans to build a luxury hotel and convention center on Salt Lake's Block 34.

But late last year, Parrish sold the property to Grand America. Plans for the store's former site have not been announced.

The turn-of-the-century stucco Flower Patch shop, fronting State Street at 500 South, was seen by some as a symbolic bulwark against massive urban-renewal projects.