The Main Street Coffee House is closing up shop and the Summit Church, which operated in the coffee house, is going with it.
Shop managers blame a bad Main Street economy, unreasonably high rents and Salt Lake City's Main Street grant program for their demise.
While the closure is bad news for Main Street downtown, which already has its share of boarded-up storefronts, the closure is good news for the Crazy Goat Saloon strip club located one block over on West Temple.
"Basically we're just another victim of downtown," coffee shop manager Stephanie Lankford said. "The rent is kind of high and there's not a lot of traffic. The ends don't meet at the end of the month."
Coffee house partner Clint Roberts said the struggling business wasn't helped when the city's Redevelopment Agency gave $20,000 in free cash to the Gunsay Baking Co., which opened next door.
"In a climate that was getting bad all around us we got a new business right next door with a lot of competing menu items," Robert said, adding that "owners of all the Main Street properties really are asking high rents given the climate here."
Lankford and Roberts said the Summit Church will continue at another location, which hasn't been found yet.
RDA executive director David Oka said he didn't think the city's grant program was to blame for the coffee shop's downfall. Instead, high rent and the overall business climate were more at fault, he said.
In an ongoing legal battle over the Crazy Goat Saloon, attorneys for the real estate arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had argued that city administrators erred when they allowed the strip club to open so near the Summit Church. By city law a strip club can't open within 1,000 feet of a church.
That legal argument will likely fall apart now that the Summit Church is leaving its Main Street location between 100 and 200 South.
Still, the case will continue with other legal arguments set to be decided in court.
E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com