SOUTH SALT LAKE—A years-long effort to cement South Salt Lake's legacy as a car-centric suburb came to fruition Thursday, with the opening of a new drive-thru fast food restaurant that fills in the final corner of a key block in what city leaders conceive of as their "downtown" core.

At the corner of Main Street and 2100 South—perched at the city's boundary with the state capital and within a half-mile of two passenger rail stations—a new In-N-Out franchise boasts a two-lane ordering queue for drivers and more than 50 surface parking stalls (only a small portion of the property is devoted to the preparation and consumption of food). The restaurant joins a block that is dominated by the parking lot for a WinCo Foods and ringed by a 7-Eleven gas station, a drive-thru Raising Cane's restaurant, a drive-thru Chiplotle Restaurant, a drive-thru Chartway Credit Union, a small office building with a vestigial drive-up window currently serving as overflow vehicle parking, and a row of multi-family condomiums along the block's southern edge.

Several other drive-thru and car-oriented businesses are located in the surrounding area, including car sales lots, oil change and maintenance providers and additional fast-food franchises. And while the condominium and other residential projects in the area are ostensibly oriented toward transit services—like the S-Line Streetcar or high-frequency bus routes on State Street and 2100 South—their general design and function actively undermine broader efforts around multi-modal and active transportation in the county, ensuring that private vehicles remain the most convenient option for South Salt Lake residents, would-be visitors and anyone passing through the suburb on their way to other destinations.

"If and when we have a traffic problem and a parking problem, that will be a good problem to have," South Salt Lake city planner Jonathan Weidhamer told Fox 13 in October of 2023, ahead of a vote to allow zoning exemptions to In-N-Out, facilitating additional prioritization of drivers than standard city code allows.

A spokesperson for the South Salt Lake City government did not respond to a request for comment.

Longterm plans for the Central Pointe Trax and South Salt Lake City S-Line stations suggest the city intends to eventually invest in better travel connections for pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders. But those improvement will have to overcome many daunting obstacles, including some that were erected fairly recently by South Salt Lake City itself, most notably a decision to site a row of multi-family housing (mentioned above) in the path of the popular Parley's Trail, a companion to the S-Line Streetcar that dramatically deteriorates through South Salt Lake, effectively vanishing for the Central Pointe Place block between State Street and Main Street.

Central Pointe Station, located in South Salt Lake, plays a critical role in the Trax network as the only shared junction between all three Trax lines and the S-Line Streetcar, which serves the Sugar House neighborhood and is slated for expansion to Highland Drive. But riders attempting to access the station are cut off on three sides by hostile infrastructure, undermining the station's performance as an effective transit hub.

And while Salt Lake City, Millcreek and Murray are all reinvesting in Main Street as a human-oriented community corridor that prioritizes foot traffic over vehicle traffic, South Salt Lake has doubled-down on cars as the dominant presence on its segment of Main Street, instead spending taxpayer dollars on a high-comfort bike lane on West Temple and intending to force a two-block detour for cyclists on what is affectionately known as the "Main Line."

While there was a steady churn of car traffic to and around the In-N-Out restaurant on Thursday, the demand did not overwhelm the property's facilities nor the adjacent streets while City Weekly was present to observe. But the launch of the new businesses also saw a conspicuous lack of public promotion, in something of a departure from the national chain's typical arrival in a new location.

The new In-N-Out restaurant hosts a bike rack—as does the nearby Winco Foods—and at least one patron opted to travel to the restaurant's grand opening by bicycle on Thursday. But City Weekly's lawyers insist that we make no statement that might reasonably imply an encouragement or recommendation that any reader attempt to patronize the business, or South Salt Lake's "downtown" generally, via bicycle, as there is currently no safe way to do so.