Main Street Midvale
The brick street the freeway emptied and the paint refilled
Midvale Main, and the wall that keeps changing.
A short brick commercial street laid out for a smelter town, published by the city as the Midvale Main Arts and Culture District and carrying more than fifty murals by local, national and international artists. The city's own account of why it needed saving is unusually blunt, and what has been done about it runs from an annual paint festival to a loan book with a published scoring sheet. Here is the street, the buildings on it and the machinery behind it.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Midvale is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
A street that lost its traffic and got it back with paint.
Midvale Main is a short brick commercial street laid out to serve a smelter town, in a city that incorporated in 1909. The city now publishes it as the Midvale Main Arts and Culture District, gives it an address of 7505 South Holden Street, and describes more than fifty murals on it by local, national and international artists, along with locally owned shops, eateries and creative spaces.
The interesting part is not the paint, it is why the paint was necessary. The city's own account of the decline is unusually blunt for a municipal page: with the advent of the freeway, Main Street's importance as a north to south route dwindled, the freeway diverted traffic to newly built strip malls, and it also limited access to Main Street from the expanding eastern part of the city. Three sentences, three separate injuries, and every one of them still visible on the ground.
What has been done about it since is a mixture of art, money and administration. A mural festival that repaints part of the street every June. An art house in a renovated civic building. A food truck plaza running weekly through the summer. A loan book with published scoring criteria. And, most recently, a place in a state programme that ties all of it to historic preservation rather than to decoration.
Midvale Main by the numbers
50 plus
murals the city publishes on the district
1918
the year the theatre building opened as a cinema
250k
dollars, the ceiling on the city's reuse loan
Tier 1
its standing in the Utah Main Street network
The paint
Fifty murals on a street you can walk in twenty minutes.
The murals are the reason people from other counties come here and they are the only free outdoor attraction in this city that works identically in January and July. They are also the part most likely to be out of date in whatever you read about them, because the number goes up every summer.
The engine is an annual mural festival, published by the city as Los Muros on Main and scheduled for 13 June 2026. Each edition adds walls, which is why the count in city publications has climbed past fifty and why any figure you see quoted elsewhere is a snapshot rather than a total. The city publishes a mural map and guide for the current year, and that is the document to walk with.
Walk it rather than drive it, and give it the full length in both directions. A good share of the larger pieces are on side elevations, on loading walls and on the faces of buildings that look away from the carriageway, which means a slow drive down the street shows you a fraction of what is there. Twenty minutes at walking pace covers the ground; an hour covers the ground properly.
One consequence of an annual repaint is worth stating plainly. A wall you saw two summers ago may not carry the same work now, and a photograph in a travel post is evidence of what was there when it was taken and nothing more. If a specific piece is the reason for the journey, check the current guide before you set off. If the point is simply an afternoon looking at large paint on old brick, that part is reliable in any year.
The district is a working street rather than an exhibition, and that changes how to use it. There is no gate, no ticket, no opening time and no route marked on the ground. The murals sit on the walls of businesses that are trading, on buildings that are being renovated and on frontages that occasionally change hands. That makes it free and permanently available, and it also means the experience on a Tuesday morning with the shutters down is a different one from a Friday evening with the food truck plaza running. Pick the version you want before you choose the day.
The buildings
One address has been six things since 1918, and it is still open.
The theatre at 7711 South Main Street is the best single argument for why this street was worth saving, because the building has simply refused to stop being a venue. Its own published history runs like this: the Iris Theatre opened in 1918 with seating listed at 250. It became the Burk Theatre, which showed films in historic downtown Midvale from the 1940s through 1975 under the Burkinshaw family. Afterwards it traded as the Gazebo Theatre and then as the Main Street Cinema.
Around 1990 Bill Spinning opened a comedy club in the space. In the 2010s Tammy and Stephan Ross renamed it the Midvale Main Street Theatre and used it for children's theatre productions. It now trades as The Pearl on Main, which the city describes as a rock venue and theatre for tributes, local acts and community plays. That is a cinema, a second cinema, a third cinema, a comedy club, a children's theatre and a music room in one shell across more than a century.
The other building worth knowing about is the art house, which the city describes as the former Midvale Museum building, renovated in 2024 and now housing artists, art, classes and events. That is a civic building given a second job rather than a new build, which is the whole thesis of this district in one address. The museum itself did not disappear with it: it sits on the corner of the city park, and the park page covers it.
A third arts venue sits nearby rather than on Main. The Midvale Performing Arts Center at 695 West Center Street was built in the 1930s as Midvale City Hall and the police station, stood vacant for several years, and was extensively remodelled in 2004 into a performing arts and community centre. Its auditorium is upstairs with permanent seating of 110 and a raised floor at the back for overflow and for sound and lighting. It is run by the Midvale Arts Council, and it hosts part of the city's festival week each summer. The park page carries the rest of that week.
A building that has been a cinema three times, a comedy club and a children's theatre is not heritage in aspic. It is a room that keeps finding work.
The machinery
Behind the paint sits a loan book with a scoring sheet.
This is the part nobody photographs and it is the part that decides whether a street like this is still standing in twenty years. Midvale's Redevelopment Agency publishes the terms in full, which is unusual and which makes them checkable.
| What the city publishes | The detail | Why it matters on the ground |
|---|---|---|
| A place in the Utah Main Street network | Midvale Main joined as a Tier 1 Promising Community, one of seven communities in that cohort with Park City, Tremonton, Smithfield, Bountiful, Midway and Milford, taking the network to 29 | It ties the district to a historic preservation programme rather than to a beautification budget, and the programme is housed in the state historic preservation office |
| An adaptive reuse loan, up to 250,000 dollars | For land and building acquisition, construction and renovation, facade work including signage and landscaping, energy and equipment upgrades, and building code compliance | It is aimed at the expensive part of an old street, which is bringing a century old shell up to current code, rather than at the cheap part |
| A published scoring sheet | Forty points across Economic Impact, Public Amenity, Beautification and Street Activation, with a minimum eligibility score of 25 | An applicant can work out in advance roughly where a project lands, which is rare for a municipal incentive |
| Interest that falls with the score | The rate drops 0.25 percent for every 3 points earned above the minimum, with a floor of 1 percent, and qualifying public benefit projects are published at 0 percent | The city is buying public benefit with rate rather than with grant, and it says so in writing |
| Two further programmes | A Main Street Facade Improvement Program and a Midvale Main Business Loan Program, published separately | Facade money and business money are separate queues, so a shop front project and a trading project are different applications |
Programme terms as published by the Midvale City Redevelopment Agency, checked 8 August 2026. Terms, ceilings and scoring change, and eligibility is limited to property within the published Main Street Project Area, so take the current position from the agency rather than from this page. RDA Program Manager Aubrey Christensen, 801-567-7261, or [email protected].
None of that is a reason for a visitor to care and all of it is a reason for a household to. A district held together by an annual festival is charming and fragile. A district held together by a festival, a preservation programme, a loan book with published criteria and a facade fund is a policy, and policies survive changes of fashion better than events do.
The honest limit is that a loan is an offer rather than an outcome. Money on the table does not fill a unit, and a street that lost its through traffic to a freeway is competing against retail parks that did not. What the record supports is that the street is being worked on continuously and openly. What it does not support is a promise about what will be trading on it in five years, and anybody making one is guessing.
How to use it well
Four habits for a street with no opening time.
Park once and walk the whole length in one direction, then come back on the other side. The district is compact enough that this takes under half an hour at a normal pace, and it is the only way to see the pieces that face into side yards, service lanes and the gaps between buildings.
Pick your day for the version you want. A summer Friday with the food truck plaza running is a street with people on it and food in the open air. A weekday morning outside the season is a quiet architectural walk with the paint to yourself. Neither is the wrong answer, but they are genuinely different afternoons and the difference is not visible on a map.
Take the current mural guide from the city, check anything that is a business before you rely on it, and put the June festival date in the diary if new work is the point of the trip. And treat the street as one part of a short day rather than the whole of it: the city park, its disc golf course and the museum are close enough to walk to in the same afternoon, and the ranked list sets out the order I would take them in.
Keep reading
More of Midvale on The Local.
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A mural street, a disc golf course, a museum open three afternoons, and a driving range.
Read the guideThe park
Midvale City Park and the museum
An amphitheatre, a disc golf course, a splash pad and a museum on the northeast corner.
Read the guideBingham Junction
Bingham Junction, on cleaned ground
Four hundred and forty six acres off the federal cleanup list, and what stands there now.
Read the guideThe river
The Jordan River through Midvale
Two riverside parks, a trail on the west edge, and the ground it was built out of.
Read the guideMoving here
A small city in the middle
Five point eight square miles, three railway platforms, and what small area actually buys.
Read the guideThe companion
Midvale, the whole picture
Main Street, the park, the reclaimed ground, the river edge and the address, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The street, answered.
The city publishes more than fifty, by local, national and international artists, and the number rises each year because an annual mural festival adds walls. That is why counts quoted in older articles and travel posts run lower and should be treated as snapshots. The city produces a mural map and guide for the current year, which is the document to walk with rather than any photograph set more than a summer old.
Los Muros on Main, the city's mural festival, is published for 13 June 2026. It runs annually and each edition adds new work to the district, which is the mechanism behind the growing count. Dates move from year to year, so take the current one from the city. If new work is the reason for the trip, the days immediately after the festival are the ones with the freshest walls on them.
The city's own published account gives three reasons and they compound. With the advent of the freeway, Main Street's importance as a north to south route dwindled. The freeway diverted traffic to newly built strip malls. And it also limited access to Main Street from the expanding eastern part of the city. So the street lost its through traffic, lost its retail competition and lost its own residents' easy access, all from the same piece of infrastructure.
The city's name for the historic Main Street area, published at 7505 South Holden Street. Alongside the murals it carries locally owned shops, eateries and creative spaces, a Main Street Food Truck Plaza running weekly food truck events through the summer in partnership with the Food Truck League, and the Midvale Main Art House, which the city describes as the former Midvale Museum building renovated in 2024 and now housing artists, art, classes and events.
The theatre at 7711 South Main Street, which the city describes as a rock venue and theatre for tributes, local acts and community plays. The building's own published history is remarkable: the Iris Theatre opened there in 1918 with seating listed at 250, it became the Burk Theatre showing films from the 1940s through 1975 under the Burkinshaw family, then the Gazebo Theatre and the Main Street Cinema, then a comedy club around 1990, then the Midvale Main Street Theatre in the 2010s.
Yes. Midvale Main joined the Utah Main Street network as a Tier 1 Promising Community, one of seven communities in that cohort alongside Park City, Tremonton, Smithfield, Bountiful, Midway and Milford, taking the network to 29 communities. The programme is housed in the Utah State Historic Preservation Office within the Department of Cultural and Community Engagement and is a Coordinating Program of Main Street America.
A Redevelopment Agency loan of up to 250,000 dollars to property owners within the published Main Street Project Area, covering land and building acquisition, construction and renovation, facade improvements including signage and landscaping, energy and equipment upgrades and building retrofits, and compliance with city building codes. Scoring runs to 40 points across four criteria with a minimum of 25, the rate falls 0.25 percent per 3 points above that minimum with a 1 percent floor, and qualifying public benefit projects are published at 0 percent.
Two, and they are different buildings. The Pearl on Main sits on Main Street itself at 7711 South. The Midvale Performing Arts Center is at 695 West Center Street, built in the 1930s as Midvale City Hall and the police station, left vacant for several years and extensively remodelled in 2004. Its upstairs auditorium has permanent seating of 110 with a raised floor at the back for overflow and for sound and lighting, and the Midvale Arts Council runs it.
Twenty minutes to walk the length of it and about an hour to do it properly, because a good share of the murals sit on side elevations, loading walls and frontages that face away from the carriageway and are invisible from a moving car. Park once, walk one way and return on the other side. If a performance, a meal or the summer food truck plaza is part of the plan, treat it as a half day rather than a stop.
A street being rebuilt one building and one wall at a time.
A district held together by a festival, a preservation programme and a published loan book is a policy rather than a mood, and that is worth knowing if you are weighing an address within walking distance of it. Send me the streets you are circling and I will put you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who works this part of the valley, while I take the homework and the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.