In Los Angeles I have seen countless neighborhoods that had become ghetto make a tremendous turnaround due to the Latino influence.
Weber County
By Derek P. Jensen
The Salt Lake Tribune
OGDEN - Carmen Ponce Deleon's "carneceria" is a beacon glimmering through the chaos of street-worn winos, drug-ridden rentals, a hard-luck school and derelicts sleeping in forsaken cars.
Inside El Rodeo Meat Market, cinnamon scents and Latin guitar meld with piles of peppers, freshly sliced pig, pink and purple pi atas. A Corona beer sign glows against silver cauldrons for steaming tamales. Spanish-speaking grocers assist a steady stream of regulars, from children to grandparents.
"They feel like a family," says Ponce Deleon, a 42-year-old native of Chihuahua, Mexico, in seamless English.
In less than five years, Carmen and husband Jaime have taken the former boxing gym and punched promise into part of Utah's once second-most populated city, a place many say suffers from a midlife crisis.
Rich in railroad history, and later sustained by military-industrial jobs, Ogden now is scratching to find a defining industry. Some suggest skiing - Snowbasin hosted the 2002 Olympic downhill - while politicians plot a gondola over the rooftops to transform the working-class town into a high-end winter playground. Others clamor for consistent work. Any new jobs will do.
All the while, the county hub has itself been defined by a demographic shift that has literally changed its face. According to estimates, nearly 30 percent of Ogden is now Latino - more than three times the state average.
It is these immigrants, entrepreneurs like Carmen and Jaime, who are turning cast-off corners into places where neighbors gather.
Feels Like Home
During lunch rush, Ponce Deleon calmly helps her cadre of loyal employees and greets customers who are gathering everything from "menudo" and other meats to "tamarindo," stocked to mollify the middle school children across the street. Teachers, too, buy the spicy candy to reward good students.
Carmen and Jaime, along with their three kids, bolted Anaheim, Calif. and a carpet cleaning business in 2000 when the gangs and congestion became too much. They like the pace of Weber County - the family lives in nearby Harrisville - but took a gamble on the market. Within months it was profitable, leading the newcomers to open a second store and begin delivering groceries by van.
"Around here, there are a lot of people who don't have cars," Ponce Deleon says, adding the community reminds her of Chihuahua.
Still, it has unique problems, forcing the family to monitor the store by camera. A police sting last month notched dozens of drug arrests along the dilapidated blocks near the business.
It stands in cold contrast from the mansion-style homes emerging along the county's east-side timberline, near the ski areas, or the meandering rows of barns and horse trailers to the west.
Ponce Deleon doesn't seem to mind as she points to a plaque above the counter. It is an award issued by the city for helping to turn the neighborhood around.
"I never imagined retiring here," she says, smiling. "Now, I'm looking forward to it."
A Road Reborn
Less than a mile down the road, "Two-bit Street," or Historic 25th, is in the final stages of a renaissance. Whether a turn toward Park City, complete with yoga studio, is a good thing depends on who you ask.
Inside Rooster's, Kym Buttschardt's booming restaurant brewery, residents say a string of eateries, boutiques, museums and especially the loft-style living suggest the county's "crown jewel" is back.
"It's become a destination," Buttschardt says about the street notorious for gambling, brothels, biker bars and decades of drunkenness. "We call it the 'mountain to metro' effect."
Nearly two years at the helm of an unlikely sushi bar, Adam Nouansacksy agrees. "It's definitely getting cleaned up," he says, wrapping rolls at Shin Sei, Japanese for "newborn star."
Buttschardt and her husband now own three restaurants. Such entrepreneurship, she says, is key to recasting Ogden's otherwise foundering downtown.
On a bar stool a block down, Ko Ko Mo owner Eddie Simone weaves tales of wilder times on the street where he grew up. Instructed by nuns around the corner at St. Joseph Elementary by day, Simone spent afternoons selling newspapers on 25th and tormenting the madam at Rose's Room, a brothel. At 21, he bought the bar, which kept him from working "a ho-hum job at Hill Field."
"I used to leave the house and wonder who I was going to get into a fight with," he recalls.
Now 65, and also running a bail bonds business, Simone longs for the edgier times. He lights up while describing a discovery made during a Ko Ko Mo remodel: a sawed-off shotgun and dozens of soldiers' wallets, robbed then ditched during World War II.
"Maybe I like the old ways better," Simone mumbles with a grin. "It's milquetoast now."
To Your Health
Al Garcia has found his niche in Weber County.
After opening an herb and distilled water emporium, the New Mexico transplant discovered his preventative products are a natural fit.
"It's right in line with the lifestyle," he says, explaining ginseng, protein supplements and pure water are popular with Latinos who rely on sound health to perform physical jobs. " If you don't have [health] insurance, you have to do this."
As a woman refills her towering water bottle, the front doors in Garcia's Ogden store get a workout. Mostly Mexican immigrants peruse bottles of peppermint concentrate that helps clear congestion or pills that deter appetite while they wait for water bottles to fill.
"My eyes are peeled on 7-Eleven and Maverik stores that shut down," says Garcia, who suddenly has stores scattered across the Southwest.
The Ogden store - across the street from a Mexican bar and labor office - also has altered the life of Jeremy Dannehl, Garcia's son-in-law, who chats up his regular customers in Spanish honed during a Mormon mission.
Between sales, Dannehl grabs a handful of herbs from his pocket. The green capsules capture the attention of Guadalupe Sustaita, a regular at the store. "My kids haven't missed a day of school since they have been taking these," he tells her.
Dannehl once worked in a factory on Ogden's west side, fortifying cars bound for Mexico with bullet-proof armor. He now manages the health store and is committed to providing that country's immigrants an entirely different product.
djensen@sltrib.com
Welcome to Little Mountain, home to Westinghouse's Western Zirconium plant. For 25 years, more than 400 workers have commuted here from as far away as southern Idaho and Riverton. They come to make zirconium, an impenetrable substance used to safely house nuclear fuel rods.
"We don't glow in the dark," Erika Anderson jokes about the chemical-heavy operation - with armed guards - that runs around the clock.
Despite the remote location - the plant is perched along the Great Salt Lake's moonscape shore that doubles as an Air Force training ground - workers say the good pay and benefits keep them coming back.
Anderson says she appreciates seeing the deer and horses on her daily drive from Roy. Her only gripe: the lack of lunch options. "There is a 'roach coach' that comes out here. But you know how that goes."