Trolley Square shopping center in Salt Lake City will be getting a half dozen new stores. Those plans are to be unveiled today before the Salt Lake City Planning Commission.

The mall, built on an old trolley complex in use until 1945, became a shopping mall in the early 1970s. Development companies ScanlanKemperBard Cos. and Blake Hunt Ventures purchased the property last year with plans to overhaul the existing mall, add Utah's first Whole Food natural grocery store and rebuild the mall's aging parking structure.

That overhaul had included adding condominiums or apartments on the west end of the Trolley Square property, which is located on the block between 500 South and 600 South and 600 East and 700 East.

But Tom Bard of ScanlanKemperBard said Wednesday his company instead will add about 37,000 square feet of retail space - five or six stores - to the west of the mall on the same level as the main mall above a new underground parking structure.

Work on rebuilding the parking structure will begin in mid-May; once that is completed work on the additional retail space will begin.

Residences will now be built south of 600 South on property that is now mainly a surface parking lot. Bard said the two companies determined the move could save a lot of money - providing the parking needed to support residences at that location would be much cheaper than on the west side of the main mall.