Fire destroyed a market and community ‘anchor’ in Kearns. Here’s how the owners plan to rebuild.​on February 4, 2025 at 4:05 pm

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The family that owns La Placita Market in Kearns, called “an anchor in the community,” talk about plans to rebuild after a fire.   

Para leer este artículo en español, haz clic aquí.

Kearns • The musky odor of soot and charred wood permeated the frigid January air at the corner of Northwest Avenue and 5400 South, in the once-bustling plaza known to locals as “La Placita.”

The plaza’s current state — littered with burst soda bottles and scorched glass — is not how Claudia Palacios remembers it.

Short summer walks across the street to La Placita Market were routine for Palacios and her family, her four kids piling the market’s sole register high with Mexican sour candy, “papitas con chile” and Takis.

On solo runs to La Placita for dinner, Palacios would make it a habit to grab a mazapan – a crumbly, round treat made of almond meal and sugar – to eat in the car before going home.

“It was part of my everyday,” said Palacios, 34. “Getting the carne asada, the chorizo – getting whatever we need.”

Early on Jan. 15, a fire decimated the popular plaza. Two weeks later, the area stood deserted, the storefront’s heat-curled panels an unfamiliar sight to the town’s residents.

“That corner was an anchor to this community,” said Kearns Mayor Kelly Bush. “Losing [La Placita] in the way that we did, it was [like] a loss of a family member.”

‘La tiendita en la esquina’

Palacios said smells like what you would find in a Mexican mercado — toasted salsa ranchera and marinated adobo meat — would welcome her whenever she shopped at La Placita. The aromas, she said, would remind her of Sundays with her grandma.

“La Placita is that corner store that we all had in Mexico,” said Palacios, who moved to Utah from Mexico more than 22 years ago. “La tiendita en la esquina.”

“¡Ándate!,” said Miguel Gertrus Rosas, La Placita’s butcher, in a Spanish saying often used to show agreement. ” I mean, La Placita would have everything.”

Before he became the shop’s butcher, Gertrus Rosas, 35, said he would “feel at home” whenever he would arrive at La Placita for his morning pan dulce con cafe – Mexican sweet bread with coffee.

“The atmosphere that was there, it was beautiful,” said Gertrus Rosas, who moved to Utah 15 years ago from the Mexican coastal state of Guerrero. “I [felt] like I was at home, on my ranch.”

Two decades ago Gudeliva Perez — who co-owns La Placita with her husband, Omar Vaca — said she remembers Latinos living in Kearns having to “travel far” to buy groceries.

“We were few in Kearns,” said Perez’s daughter, Mayralivia Perez Vaca, of the township she once saw as a “culture shock.” “It’s so different now.”

Bush said 41% of the township’s population is now Hispanic or Latino, the community’s growth going hand-in-hand with the expansion of Latino businesses in the area.

Mayralivia said she remembers the businesses her parents started, La Panaderia Mexico (which they later sold) and La Placita, created a “ripple effect” of growth in the Latino community.”

Establishing La Placita, Omar Vaca said, had its risks.

As they waited for their clientele to grow, it was just the two of them — Gudeliva as the market’s sole cashier, and Omar as their butcher and product stocker.

“Sometimes, people think that having a business, it’s like ‘That person, they’re now rich,’” Omar Vaca, 57, said in Spanish. “Running a business makes you independent of your time.”

“But that you get rich?” continued Omar, with a laugh. “No, but it does beat a job.”

La Placita’s sounds of cumbias and corridos would greet customers as soon as they walked in. Gudeliva, 58, called it “la música de uno” — one’s own music.

“My dad would always tell us that when a person comes in and hears Mexican music, whether it is a jarabe or a corrido, it brings back memories of their land, their culture, their people,” said Gudeliva, in Spanish.

Bush said she knew it was lunch time when Kearns High students made the trek to La Placita. The swarms of teens would cross the railroad tracks behind the school and down the hill to get their fill of chips and cut-up fruit.

“That’s the place they chose,” said Bush, who has lived in Kearns for more than 17 years. “There wasn’t a day that went by that you wouldn’t see that.”

Later, their team would turn into eight, each one of the Perez Vaca children taking their turn to tend the store.

Osvaldo Vaca Perez, the family’s second youngest, said he would spend nights at La Placita with his siblings, his mother’s croons to “música mexicana” floating among the shelves as he restocked. Their work, he said, would often lead to game matches among the family, a pallet stacking race being their go-to competition.

Although most of his youth revolved around La Placita — soccer games often followed by trips to Sam’s Club with his father — Osvaldo said the market gave their family a way to create “memories outside of the store.”

“Because they had this store, I was able to understand work ethic — a motivation to have a dream,” said Osvaldo, 22. “It really hurt to see their dream, their hard work, just be burnt down.”

La Placita, whose name means “the small square,” stood as a gathering place, Mayralivia said, where customers found “familiarity.”

“It wasn’t a big fancy place,” said Mayralivia, 36, “but it was a place where people felt like they could be themselves.”

What started the fire?

At around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 15, Bush found out about the strip mall’s fire from a Ring alert to her phone.

“How bad is it?” Bush said she asked a Kearns fire chief, clicking through TV channels before landing on news updates about the blaze.

Bush said the chief answered, “it’s really bad.”

Some 80 responders from West Valley City, West Jordan, Taylorsville and Kearns fire departments took nearly 12 hours to fully extinguish and clean up the full structure fire, said Benjamin Porter, Unified Fire Authority’s public information officer.

As Gudeliva watched the firefighters work, while her family huddled at the corner of the closed 5400 South road, she said she could only feel fear.

Later, Gudeliva said, she would “feel like a fool.” Weeks earlier, she had bought extra pallets of charcoal and oil, her way to prepare for the Trump administration’s promised tariffs on imported goods.

“They couldn’t put out that charcoal,” she said, adding that she watched firefighters use an aerial strategy to put out the fire.

Gudeliva said she later found out the policy she had renewed the previous year wasn’t for La Placita’s insurance, it was for workers’ compensation.

While the plaza’s property owner, who was insured, will cover the cost of rebuilding the structure, the Vaca family said, the inventory and equipment lost is up to the family to recover.

As of Friday morning, a GoFundMe to recuperate funds for the market’s lost merchandise and appliances has collected pledges of more than $5,300, toward a goal of $9,000.

“At this point, we don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s not just about the two of us,” said Gudeliva of herself and Omar. “It’s everyone. … But the question of if we want to get La Placita back? Well, yes, of course.”

What’s next for the market

Gudeliva, at home with her children and their memories of La Placita, recalled her own cherished moment.

Like many other birthdays, Gudeliva celebrated her 41st at La Placita, her first two gifts being a Bible and a bouquet of flowers. But her third, she said, would be her youngest child, a baby boy who was left at La Placita.

“I know that the material things are gone,” said Gudeliva Perez of her burned-down market. “But my son, he remains. … He’s the greatest thing I received from La Placita.”

For Claudia Palacios and her family of four, a day hasn’t gone by without them wishing for the Kearns plaza to come back, she said. Sitting in the back of the car as they picked up Little Caesars’ pizzas (their regular pizza joint, Papa Johns, also burned down), her son asked to stop at La Placita for some snacks.

“Papito, La Placita, se quemó,” Palacios reminded her son, “It burned down.”

“Oh man,” the son replied, “I forgot.”

“As a family … [La Placita] was our store,” Palacios said. “It’s going to be hard to find a place that can provide the same feeling.”

Outside La Placita, across the singed brick walls where community flyers and advertisements once hung, imagery representing La Placita remains – an abundance of fruit and vegetables that signaled that the market was “lleno de productos,” filled with goods, Omar said.

“Somos 50/50,” said Gudeliva of her partnership with her husband, “We’re 50/50.” But in business decisions, Omar said, especially in their plans to restore La Placita, it’s Gudeliva who takes point.

“If she says, ‘Let’s do this.’ Well, we’ll do it,” said Omar, “Si hay que trabajar fuerte, pues trabajo fuerte porque yo sé que ella también trabaja fuerte.” If there’s work to be done, he’ll work hard, he said, knowing that his wife will do the same.