The Milk Block
Community Revitalization
416 East 900 South, Salt Lake City 84111
Original Construction: 1941
National Register: Listed in Liberty Wells Historic District
The People Behind It
Owners: Kathia Dang and Sam Sleiman
Project Manager: Michael Delgado-Dang
Architect: Merry Warner, Structo Inc.
General Contractor: Will Petersen, Scale Construction Inc.
At a Glance
The Milk Block receives the Community Revitalization award because its owners understood from the beginning that saving the building was only half the work. The 1941 commercial structure was preserved, its Art Deco marquee restored, its original bow trusses uncovered and left exposed, its terracotta facade carefully matched where it could not be salvaged and then filled with equal intentionality: a food co-op serving a neighborhood that has long lacked access to fresh food, locally owned businesses opening their first brick-and-mortar locations, and Equality Utah headquartered on a street named for Harvey Milk. The building that once housed a neighborhood grocery store has become a neighborhood anchor again, connecting the community around it to its past and to each other in ways that no new development built in its place could have achieved.
The Story
The building at 416 East 900 South was constructed in 1941 and has housed a market for nearly its entire existence: the O.P. Skaggs Market, then Sudbury's Foodtown, then Super Save Discount Market, then the Southeast Asian Market, Melewa Bakery, and Pho 28. When the owners of the Asian market chose to retire after 23 years, the building's future was uncertain. A modest 1941 commercial structure without a historic designation can disappear quickly when development pressure builds. Instead, owners Kathia Dang and Sam Sleiman chose to look more carefully at what was already there.
When selective demolition began in November 2023, they uncovered something unexpected: original bow trusses that had been supporting the building's dome-shaped roof for decades, concealed beneath dropped ceilings installed over the years. Rather than treating this discovery as a complication, the team made it a centerpiece, leaving the trusses exposed for future occupants and visitors to see and appreciate. Interior brick walls were retained. The Art Deco corner marquee and tower were preserved. Where the original terracotta tile facade could not be fully recovered, it was matched with new tile that honors the original pink hue. One removed bow truss remains on site as a physical record of the building's history.
The project was not without difficulty. Five years of rezoning, community hearings, public engagement, and city approvals preceded the first day of construction. Neighbors voiced doubts. Seismic upgrades required to support a new partial second floor necessitated structural intervention, including the installation of large I-beams while the original roof was maintained. Simultaneous construction of the 9-line bike lane required on-the-fly adjustments to changes in elevation. Through all of it, Kathia and Sam held to their original intention: to preserve what was worth preserving and to build something that would genuinely serve the people around it.
Preservation Work
The preservation philosophy behind the Milk Block was straightforward: keep what has character, reveal what has been hidden, and let the building's history inform its future. That approach produced some of the project's most distinctive outcomes. The original bow trusses, concealed for decades beneath dropped ceilings, were uncovered during early demolition and left exposed throughout the building, giving every occupant and visitor a direct encounter with the structure's 1941 bones. Interior brick walls were retained wherever possible. The Art Deco corner marquee and tower defining elements of the building's street presence were preserved and restored. Where the original terracotta tile facade could not be salvaged, it was carefully matched so that the pink hue of the original material lives on in the new.
Not everything could be saved. Seismic upgrades required to support the new partial second floor necessitated the removal of two bow trusses, a difficult but unavoidable trade-off. One of the removed trusses remains on site, kept as a tangible reminder of what the building once was and a signal that the history here was taken seriously, even when it could not be fully preserved.
The owners approached the project with a belief that older buildings carry something new construction cannot replicate, and that belief guided every decision about what to keep, what to restore, and what to let speak for itself.
Why It Matters
The Milk Block's anchor tenant is the Wasatch Cooperative Food Market, the city's first food co-op opening in spring 2026 to serve a surrounding community where a significant percentage of residents live below the poverty line or spend more than half of their income on housing. The block sits within a food desert, and the co-op, which prioritizes carrying more than 20 percent locally sourced products, will change that. Every other tenant is a locally owned business, several opening their first brick-and-mortar location here.
The name itself signals the intention. The Milk Block takes its name from Harvey Milk Boulevard, the stretch of 900 South on which it sits, and from Harvey Milk's own words about building community one neighborhood at a time. That philosophy shaped every decision about who would occupy the block and what it would stand for. Equality Utah is now headquartered here. When a proposal emerged to rename 900 South, Milk Block businesses gathered more than 7,000 signatures in days, an unplanned demonstration of exactly the kind of community that had been built.
The building that once housed a grocery store, then an Asian market, then sat at risk of disappearing entirely, has become an anchor for neighborhood identity, economic opportunity, and civic life on one of the city's most storied streets.