Once upon a time, Sandy residents had to go outside the city for a good meal.
Now folks are coming from all over to eat in Sandy, especially in the South Towne area. The 10600 South and State Street corridors, near where the two roads intersect, are fast becoming restaurant row.Sixteen eating establishments, not including the nine restaurants in the South Towne Center's food court, are now open for business in the area and another one is being built. Ten of those restaurants, including TGI Friday's, the Training Table and DeLoretto's Pizzeria, have opened their doors within the past year-and-a-half.
Plans have been announced for six more restaurants in the area, including a Taco Bell, a Chili's Southwest Grill, a Schlotzsky's Deli and a Hardee's, and construction of at least two more has been proposed.
Scott Slaymaker, whose company owns 11 restaurants in the Salt Lake Valley including the Sandy TGI Friday's, said he wouldn't be surprised to see the South Towne area crowded with as many as 35 eateries within a couple of years.
"We identified the South Towne location as probably the best primary growth market in the Salt Lake Valley," said Slaymaker, president of the Slaymaker Restaurant Group. "As (the area) becomes an entertainment center, sort of a focal point, it attracts people from farther away and that increases the number of people coming in" to the area's restaurants, he said.
Slaymaker said South Towne's existing and planned retail centers made the location a natural for TGI Friday's. The city's intent to bring in a dozen or so large office buildings near City Hall could have a positive impact on lunch-time traffic in the future, he added.
"Along Centennial Parkway we have several office buildings that look like they're going to be built, and that brings a lot of employees in," said Lesley Casaril, the city's business license administrator. "All these (restaurants) should have good lunch-time crowds."
But Casaril said most of the restaurants coming in are affiliated with national chains - companies that don't gamble on maybes and wouldn't be moving in if there wasn't already a demand.
"I think the demand already exists," agreed Guy Woodbury, general manager of the Woodbury Corp., which recently sold property for another new restaurant off 10600 South. "The restaurants that have located out there have just done incredibly well. The sales volumes have been much higher than projections."
Slaymaker said TGI Friday's business has been terrific since May but noted three more restaurants catering to similar clientele are moving in to the neighborhood.
"Once everybody starts to succeed then everybody else decides they've got to jump on the bandwagon," Woodbury said. "At one time 10600 South was felt to be far away to many people, even in the southern end of the valley. Now it's become more of an accepted hub of business."
And a place to chow down.