EDCU has good year: 14,949 jobs made or saved

The Economic Development Corporation of Utah had a busy 2015-16 fiscal year, working on projects expected to result in 14,949 jobs created or retained in the state.

The Economic Development Corporation of Utah had a busy 2015-16 fiscal year, working on projects expected to result in 14,949 jobs created or retained in the state.

Figures for the year, unveiled at a recent meeting of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development board, indicate that EDCU’s work is expected to total 13,411 created jobs and 1,538 retained jobs. The job-creation figure is up from 9,081 in fiscal 2015 and 6,872 in fiscal 2014. The retention figure was down from 5,632 the prior year but up from 1,060 in fiscal 2014.

A private nonprofit organization, EDCU works with state and local government and private industry to attract and grow companies. The fiscal year figures include both companies that have been awarded incentives from the GOED board and ones that did not.

EDCU officials have long lauded the importance of site visits, when company officials or their hired site selectors come to Utah to review the state’s advantages as a potential business location. Site visits during the past fiscal year totaled 61, down from 107 in the prior year and 110 the year before that.

“But I think that those site visits were much more effective and much quicker, interestingly,” Erin Laney, EDCU’s vice president of business development, told the GOED board. “We used to see a lot of three- or four-day site visits. Now we see one-day site visits, [or] six-hour site visits, so I think that’s just showing a trend and a change in corporate recruitment.”

Laney said she was happy to see the EDCU project “wins” during the past fiscal year having total capital investment of nearly $1 billion. The projects are expected to result in $928.5 million in capital spending, up from $796.8 million the prior fiscal year and $383.1 million the year before that.

The organization has 140 “open” projects in its pipeline. Laney noted that February was a particularly busy month. “Things typically slow down around December and January because of the holidays,” she said. “We picked up quite a bit in February and it remained fairly consistent throughout the remainder of the year.”

Seventy-three projects were initiated during the last six months of the fiscal year, January through June. Their average job projection is 226, with average project capital spending of $51 million. Forty-one of the 73 new projects fit into a state-defined economic cluster. Seventeen are in information technology, seven in life sciences and eight in outdoor recreation. “That’s fairly high for that cluster,” Laney said of outdoor recreation.

Among key projects near the end of the pipeline are a 300-job manufacturing operation with a $4.5 million capital expenditure figure, and two distribution/warehouse projects — one tied to 200 jobs and a $104 million capital spending figure, and another with 195 jobs and $207 million in capital expenditure.

“This represents a fairly wide range of projects we’re working on,” Laney said of the list. “It’s hard to pick key projects because there are so many in our pipeline that I think are exciting and key.”