San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)

Booms in Idaho, Utah buck growth trend

- By Lindsay Whitehurst and Keith Ridler msutter@express-news.net | Twitter: @fedmanwalk­ing | Instagram: @fedmanwalk­ing

SALT LAKE CITY — Two Western states known for their rugged landscapes and wide-open spaces are bucking the trend of sluggish U.S. population growth, which dipped to the lowest level since the Great Depression, though different forces are powering the population booms in Utah and Idaho.

In Utah, births largely drove the fastest growth in the country over the past decade. In neighborin­g Idaho, newcomers from California and other states helped it capture the second

an area of vacant lots and old homes with rusted roofs and peeling paint. In the shadow of the Alamodome, but with a great view of the Tower of the Americas, he transforme­d a quiet block into Cherrity Bar, a sprawling warren of buildings with a bar, a Japanese ramen restaurant and enough outside courtyard space to survive the rigors of social distancing at the height of the pandemic.

And not just survive, but thrive, with regular crowds of 150 and more seated throughout the complex, which often features live music and yoga.

Malley, who co-owns Cherrity Bar with chef Ernest Bradley, started the business in part for philanthro­py — Cherrity donates a share of proceeds to charity — but also because he was tired of eating the same old things. “I spent 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. working on the East Side, and I got tired of

Bill Miller’s or tacos,” he said.

Malley sees expansion prospects on the block around Cherrity Bar, where he owns several other properties. In the coming years, he envisions a Montana Street Dining District with six or seven restaurant­s and studio housing, a district to rival Southtown or Austin’s Rainey Street district.

Another bar is driving business to an underdevel­oped part of

East Houston Street. Cocktail savant Benjamin Krick and business partner Lucas Bradbury opened their bar Pastiche in a 1930s cottage in 2019, hoping to evoke Europe’s artsy La Belle Époque era with vintage decor, aperitifs, liqueurs and complex cocktails. It came shortly after their downtown bar Jet-Setter opened.

Both bars rode the pandemic waves of bar shutdowns, social distancing and food service, then closed for a reset in January. Jet-Setter has reopened, with Pastiche to follow in the coming weeks.

The concept for Pastiche was born before they found the East Side cottage, Krick said. “The place fit it perfectly,” Krick said. “We left some of the imperfecti­ons, like it’s been there almost 100 years, because it has.”

The near East Side was a good choice, Krick said, because it’s not far from the Alamo, the Convention Center and major hotels. Plus, he said, the area has soul, that unquantifi­able yet indispensa­ble commodity that makes the East Side a destinatio­n for so many dreams.

Hackberry Market

The newest food-oriented developmen­t on the near East Side, Hackberry Market is the most innovative and unlikely. In the last year, the market has seen the rise of the Truth Pizzeria, one of the Top 10 pizzerias in the San Antonio Express-News’ 52 Weeks of Pizza series; a meat market called The Farmers Butcher, committed to pasture-raised animals; first-class beer from Black Laboratory Brewing; and a Korean cafe called The Magpie spot.

“I don’t ever remember seeing anything like this,” said Bill Rauer, executive officer of the Idaho Building Contractor­s Associatio­n in southwest Idaho, the state’s most populous area. “(Builders) are running at a breakneck pace right now.”

For both states, which have long been lightly populated, the expansion comes with rapid economic growth, sparking concerns about strains on infrastruc­ture, rising housing prices and a sharp increase in the cost of living that could threaten the area’s quality of life in the long term.

As the states tucked between the Rocky Mountains and the

that the Express-News praised for its “heart, soul, flavor and style.”

But Hackberry’s magic isn’t just the individual businesses. It’s a daisy chain of synergy. The pizzeria draws customers to the brewery, which sells beer to the butcher for brats, and the butcher sells cross-cut ribs to the Korean restaurant.

Putting a cluster of specialty food businesses in the same small complex resonates with Kelley Escobedo, who owns The Farmers Butcher with her husband, Mark. They specialize in sausage, making more than 30 varieties, but their cases are full of beef steaks and the cuts of pork they’ve mastered through their South Texas Heritage Pork business.

“Laurence (Seiterle) wanted it to be a mini version of the Pearl,” Escobedo said, and that became an attractive part of the pitch that brought the craft butcher shop to Hackberry after more than a decade at the Pearl Farmers Market, where they still sell sausage on the weekends.

“This is our chance to get into the next Southtown,” Escobedo said. “I hate to compare it to another neighborho­od, but it’s kind of like that.” Hackberry allowed them to open the shop without the million-dollar commitment of a downtown location, she said.

Tim Castañeda, who co-owns Black Laboratory Brewing, a craft beer taproom, with Jeff Weihe, said that after a few years of being courted by Seiterle to call Hackberry home, they finally opened — just a few days before the state’s COVID-19 restrictio­ns shut down bars. They retooled, added food and started selling beer in aluminum crowler cans to go.

As the brutal grip of the pandemic eases up, Castañeda still sees the business and the location as a good bet.

“We saw a vision that in the next five years, this area would be surrounded by lofts, more restaurant­s, more bars,” he said. “I think that this area of town is going to explode.”

Hackberry’s location was a selling point for John Winkler, who rebranded his Sulla Strada Pizza truck as Truth Pizzeria when he moved into his brickand-mortar space last year. “Any place that’s close to downtown is eventually going to be good. The South Side, the West Side, any side,” he said.

Winkler said he’s grateful that pizza is a business well equipped to survive COVID-19, one that can convert exclusivel­y to takeout, if need be, and one not wholly dependent on tourists like it would have been if he’d opened on the River Walk instead of the East Side.

That was the point of Hackberry Market all along, to be different, not to be “Anywhere USA,” as Seiterle puts it. This isn’t just anywhere; it’s the new East Side.

West Coast enter the next decade, leaders will have to wrestle with how to keep the growth rolling without letting costs spiral out of control for individual households or straining the natural resources that help draw people to the area.

The majority of Idaho’s growth, about 60 percent, has been driven by people moving into the state between 2010 to 2019, according to data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. One in five of those came from California, many of them retirees seeking lower housing prices and some of the most pristine wilderness in the continenta­l U.S.

The biggest growth

driver

in

Utah, by contrast, is new births. As home to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a faith that puts a high value on family, Utah has long been among the states with the highest birth rate, largest households and youngest overall population: 31 years old compared to 38 in the U.S. as a whole in 2019.

While the fertility rate has slowed a bit in recent years, natural growth still accounts for about 70 percent of the state’s boom. “We’re still a lot younger and we still have more kids than most states,” said Mallory Bateman, a senior research analyst at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.

But with that good news comes strain. In 2019, Utah housing prices surged nearly 11 percent, while incomes rose less than 4 percent.

It’s making it harder for young Utah families to follow the path their parents took. Matthew Clewett, 26, and his wife, Bethany, want a large family like the ones they grew up in, but high housing costs could put a serious damper on that plan.

“That was the American Dream back then: You got a job, you got married … and you didn’t really have to have a ton of money to be able to afford a home,” said Clewett, who is the public policy director of the Salt Lake Board of Realtors.

 ?? Kin Man Hui / Staff photograph­er ?? Soon-to-open Cake Thieves, offering vegan bakery goods, will be one of the specialty food businesses at Hackberry Market.
Kin Man Hui / Staff photograph­er Soon-to-open Cake Thieves, offering vegan bakery goods, will be one of the specialty food businesses at Hackberry Market.

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