Walk past the roundabout at 900 South and 1100 East this week and the whale looks off. Not broken, just unfinished. A little patchy. If you've lived here since 2022, your eyes have adjusted to a specific version of "Out of the Blue," the 23-foot sculpture that leaps out of the traffic circle in pinks and oranges meant to echo a Salt Lake sunset. That version is disappearing under fresh paint right now, and by October 3 it will be gone for good.
Most people walking by assume this is a one-time refresh, something that happens because a mural fades or a donor writes a check. It isn't. The whale was built with an expiration date baked into the plan from day one, and once you know that, the churn happening on the rest of the block starts to look a lot less random.
The Plan Behind the Paint
Artist Stephen Kesler installed "Out of the Blue" in April 2022 with an agreement that its surface mural would get repainted every three to five years. The sculpture itself, the fiberglass whale shape, was always meant to stay. The skin on top of it was designed to be temporary from the start.
The first mural, "Point of Reference" by Mike Murdock, gave the whale its now-familiar sunrise and sunset palette, a nod to the light that hits the 9th & 9th skyline. That design has lasted a little over four years, which puts it right in the middle of the window Kesler built into the original plan.
On August 1, at City Cast Salt Lake's 801 Day celebration, the city revealed what comes next. Salt Lake County-based artist Jiyoun Lee-Lodge won a countywide open call to create the whale's second mural, titled "Open Your Eyes." The selection process wasn't a quiet committee decision. The Salt Lake City Art Design Board built its shortlist around a survey called shapeSLC that collected input from more than 1,700 residents about what the whale and the neighborhood around it mean to them. Judges then weighed artistic merit against feasibility, maintenance, and how well each proposal responded to what residents actually said they wanted.
Lee-Lodge's answer uses gradients of pink and blue, flowing wave patterns, and scattered colorful dots across the whale's body, with one side showing a large open eye and the other a closed eye, both positioned above the waves at the base. She's described wanting the design to work as a kind of mirror, something that makes people pause rather than just photograph it. Mayor Erin Mendenhall put the idea plainly when the design was unveiled:
"The colors may change, but 'Out of the Blue' will remain the joyfully unexpected landmark that Salt Lakers have made their own."
That's the part worth sitting with. The whale isn't a monument that got vandalized or fell out of fashion. It's a canvas on a clock, and the neighborhood agreed to that clock before the first coat of paint went on. Lee-Lodge began painting in late August, after crews applied a primer coat over Murdock's original artwork. That primer stage is the patchy, half-finished look you're seeing on the sculpture right now if you drive the roundabout this month. The new mural is expected to be finished by October 3, when the city is throwing a public celebration called Whale Fest to mark the handoff.
The Rest of the Block Runs on the Same Clock
Once you see the whale as a fixture designed for turnover instead of permanence, the storefronts around it read differently too.
Spilt Milk's old space at 907 E 900 South, right next to Vessel Kitchen, sat empty long enough that regulars stopped expecting anything to fill it. On August 21, it became the first U.S. location for Knoops, a drinking-chocolate cafe that started in a small shop in Rye, England, back in 2013 and has since grown to roughly 30 storefronts across the UK and the Middle East. The company has said it plans to open up to 160 U.S. locations by 2032, with a second Utah store slated for Farmington this November. A vacant storefront that had become part of the block's furniture turned into the opening chapter of an international expansion, and it happened here first.
A few doors down at 1058 E 900 South, a different kind of continuity played out. That 1,600-square-foot unit spent several years as a clothing boutique before going back on the rental market earlier this year at roughly $33.48 per square foot. It has history: back in 2022, Uinta Brewing tried to turn that same space into a wine bar and ran into zoning that restricts alcohol-focused businesses along a stretch of 900 South running roughly from 850 East to 950 East. The city said no then. This year, the space found a different tenant entirely. Sugar Moose Candy, a Swedish candy shop that opened its first location in Kaysville, moved in and opened its doors, giving the corner something the wine bar proposal never could.
Not every turnover has landed yet. The Woodman Building at 859 E 900 South lost Barbacoa Mexican Grill late last year after a 20-year run, a closure that came abruptly enough to catch regulars off guard. By last spring, the broker handling the space told Building Salt Lake he was fielding roughly ten offers for the spot, a sign of how much demand still exists for a 900 South address even when a longtime tenant leaves without warning. As of that reporting, no new tenant had been announced. A few blocks over, Smith's grocery at 876 E 800 S has been finishing the exterior buildout on three new retail spaces in its parking lot, also without a confirmed tenant list as of last spring.
None of this is decline. It's the same mechanism as the whale, just running on real estate leases instead of a public art commission. Storefronts here don't sit empty because the neighborhood is struggling. They sit empty for a stretch, then get claimed by whatever wants to be part of a corner that draws foot traffic on the strength of its reputation alone.
Walking It Between Now and Whale Fest
If you want to actually watch this version of the neighborhood before it settles into its next one, the next two weeks matter more than usual.
- The whale is mid-repaint right now. Lee-Lodge's brushwork on "Open Your Eyes" is going up in stages through late September, which means the sculpture will look different on any given walk between now and October 3.
- Whale Fest on October 3 is the city's planned celebration for the finished mural, timed to land the same week the paint is expected to be complete.
- Knoops has been open since August 21 at 907 E 900 South. The menu runs on a system the founder calls "Knoopology," letting you pick a cacao percentage and customize temperature and texture rather than ordering off a fixed list.
- Sugar Moose Candy is open at 1058 E 900 South, in the space that spent years as a boutique and briefly as a rejected wine bar proposal before landing here.
- The Woodman Building space that housed Barbacoa for two decades is still in play. Whoever signs that lease will be worth watching for, given how much interest the broker reported earlier this year.
None of this required a database or a market report to notice. It required walking the block and paying attention to the difference between what's actually changing and what just looks like it never does.
That's really the point of a corner like this one. The charm of 9th & 9th has never come from staying frozen. It comes from a neighborhood that keeps agreeing, on purpose, to let its landmarks and its storefronts turn over on a rhythm residents themselves helped set. The whale just made that agreement visible.
If you're curious about how a neighborhood's day-to-day texture connects to what's happening in its housing market, Align Complete Real Estate Services keeps an eye on both sides of that question across Salt Lake. Reach out anytime you want a local read on what's changing around you.
