When a business closes its doors, its memories sometimes live on for many years. And apparently in a few locations on the westside of the Salt Lake Valley, so does its signage.

Case in point: these signs from three businesses that have closed and, in two cases, seen their buildings razed.

Motorists driving along Bangerter Highway near 4700 South in West Valley can see the sign for Riverton Music still standing proudly in the area between the old highway and the newer road that’s been added as a part of the UDOT changes at that intersection. That interchange is being rebuilt with an overpass for Bangerter that will run underneath 4700 South. The project is expected to be finished next summer.

UDOT officials seemed unclear about when and how that sign would be taken down, but seemed confident it would be removed before the new interchange is completed.

Riverton Music closed its doors at that location in January 2002. The building housed a couple of other businesses briefly before it was torn down last year.

The K-Mart in Taylorsville, located west of Bangerter at 5400 South, closed in January 2011, part of a nationwide closure of all its stores. The building sat unoccupied for over 12 years and was eventually razed in March of last year to make room for a new mixed-use project called Volta. The coming development will feature 647 residential units, swimming pools, a clubhouse, retail space and other amenities. The K-Mart sign has continued to stand at the site.

Further west on 5400 South, a store called Andi’s Market occupied a space in the Kearns Center west of 4000 West. The store operated for about five years but was closed last December. The space has remained unoccupied, but the market’s sign remains on the corner of 4000 W. 5400 South.

A check through sign ordinances in and around the Salt Lake Valley show they don’t prescribe any specific penalty or requirement for businesses to remove signs once they’ve closed. For one thing, in all three of these cases, the signs weren’t attached to the storefronts, meaning they may have sat on properties of private owners and not the store owners or operators. So the signs remain until there’s a need to take them down.

No earth-shattering news here, just something kind of quirky. The clique in businesses used to be that “if you hang out your sign, the public will flock to your doors.” Well the customers may have stopped flocking, even though your sign remains. λ