The new owners of Trolley Square have assembled a team to renovate and manage the historic property, but they are not ready to spill the beans about possible anchor tenants.

“It’s news to me,” said Tom Bard of ScanlanKemperBard Companies (SKB), Trolley’s new owner, of a recent Salt Lake Tribune report that organic-food retailer Whole Foods had committed to open its first Utah shop at Trolley Square.

However, the management team did not deny Whole Foods would be a welcome addition to the mall.

“If you surveyed developers across the country and asked if they could pick one retailer as an anchor, Whole Foods would be in the top three because it’s just such a dynamic retailer with broad appeal,” said Mark Blancarte, vice president of Blake Hunt Ventures, the firm hired to renovate the mall. “Wherever they land in Utah, that development is going to be very fortunate.”

Earlier speculation led interested parties to believe Crate & Barrel would open a store at Trolley. Such speculation has been fueled by renovation plans calling for an additional 50,000-square-foot building on the mall property.

“There’s a lot of retailers absent from the Salt Lake market. When people look at the market and they look at where logically they can go, Trolley Square seems to pop up,” Blancarte said.

Bard said he does not mind the speculation and rumors surrounding the renovation. “We’re interested in having people talk about us and think about us—it generates interest among retailers in what we’re doing.”

The current mix of tenants will likely change as the renovation gets underway. According to Blancarte, many tenants were given month-to-month leases by the mall’s previous owner just to fill empty space.

“There’s a lot of local retailers that are there just because of the advantageous rent-structure that (Simon Property Group) had, and that are interested in looking at other locations in the valley,” Blancarte said. “There are others that are excited about the investments that our team is making and ready to make a commitment to Trolley and stay there on a long-term basis.”

The management team plans to maintain the unique character of the mall, including retaining several local retailers. “We believe that it’s the combination of the local retailers, the regional retailers and the national retailers that make Trolley Square what it is,” Blancarte said.

The retailers that do stay will likely be shuffled around in a mall-wide game of musical chairs as renovation work gets underway. Bard said the renovation will be managed in phases and will take advantage of the empty spaces in the mall.

The renovation work on the main building will take place after hours to minimize the impact to retailers and shoppers, said Blancarte.

The new owners hope to bring back Trolley Square’s faded glory by opening several skylights, widening corridors, installing a glass elevator and eliminating dead-end corridors. When the work is complete in the summer of 2007, the main building will have an additional 20,000-square-feet of retail space, for a total of 180,000 square feet.

The 50,000-square-foot addition will be constructed in a later phase, along with a new underground parking garage and a condominium building.

Salt Lake-based Oakland Construction will construct the new buildings and the parking garage. NAI Utah will oversee mall operations.