- El Asadero, a west-side Mexican eatery, will soon close amid growing redevelopment pressures, though the lure of retirement also factored.
- Owner Margarito Parra has faced ups and downs as developers have demolished homes around his business to make way for apartment buildings.
- His experience is a microcosm of the broader forces at play in Salt Lake City’s west side.
SALT LAKE CITY — A few blocks east of Margarito Parra’s Mexican restaurant, a giant mural contains a defiant message amid worries of some about gentrification in Salt Lake City’s west side: “This neighborhood isn’t for sale.”
Growth and development is surging around him, however, and Parra is learning first hand that sometimes those forces won’t be denied, that money, in fact, is a driving force, notwithstanding the message on the mural at North Temple and 700 West. The operator of El Asadero since 2009, he has decried gentrification in the west side but will close his eatery at the end of July, prodded, in part, by plans to redevelop the site where his business sits.
“He has other plans for this space,” said Parra, alluding to Jereme Thaxton, the principal behind Alta Bay Capital and varied development firms pursuing a number of apartment projects on Salt Lake City’s west side…