Worries persist that the Kum & Go convenience store planned at 2100 South and 1300 East will snarl traffic and detract from a popular park.
“I’ve still yet to see the value this provides to the overall community,” said Brandon Hill, co-chair of the Sugar House Chamber of Commerce. Other businesses in the area, Hill said, “share those concerns. That’s been expressed to me dozens of times.”
In talks with Kum & Go officials last February, the Sugar House Community Council urged a bunch of changes to site plans — many with pedestrians, congestion and the park in mind. He said new designs had also eliminated one of the property’s entrances, reducing points of possible contact between pedestrians and traffic.
In response to questions about the store’s value to the community, Abbott said it would be “almost a concession stand for the park” where people could “get some sunscreen or some sodas or what have you, without having to cross over 1300 EastRepresentatives for the family-owned Iowa company behind the national Kum & Go chain of 400 outlets in 11 states announced in May 2021 they want to build more than 30 new locations in Utah by 2026.
A rendering of a new Kum & Go convenience store and fueling station proposed at the busy Sugar House corner of 2100 South and 1300 East in Salt Lake City, as see from 1300 East. Kum & Go representatives have conducted a soils study and other analysis of the site as part of addressing community concerns over potential water contamination, Abbott and others said. Designs call for extensive underground stormwater systems, which the property didn’t have before, to collect and manage on-site water flow.