More jobs coming to SLC, Hildale in So. Utah

By Brice Wallace 

A software company will grow by 485 jobs in Salt Lake City over the next five years and Hildale will be the site of a manufacturing operation that the city’s mayor calls “a game-changer” for that Southern Utah community.

Announcements about those two projects were made by the companies after being approved for incentives by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board at its May meeting.{mprestriction ids="1,3"}

Quick Base, a Massachusetts-based company, put a test operation in Salt Lake City a few months ago and now plans to add 485 jobs. The company provides an application development platform to businesses, allowing non-technical developers to build cloud applications for businesses processes. The applications include workflow and process automation, forms and customizable reports.

Quick Base has 360 employees, with 320 based at the company headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Salt Lake City currently has 40 employees.

“And our test case here has been phenomenally successful,” Doug Wendell, the company’s chief financial officer, told the GOED board. “We find that the talent pool here, the economic growth in the region, the infrastructure, all support the type of growth that we envision over the next five to 10 years. … We would expect that the vast majority of our headcount growth going forward is going to happen in Salt Lake.”

Quick Base, once a part of Intuit, was acquired by Vista Equity Partners earlier this year for more than $1 billion.

The GOED board approved a nearly $1.3 million tax credit incentive to land the $713,462 Utah project, which is expected to result in new wages of $169.4 million over five years, and nearly $6.3 million in new state taxes during that period. The new jobs will pay an average of $98,000 per year.

Most of the new jobs will be customer-facing positions, Wendell said, noting that the jobs will include software engineers, sales executives, customer care representatives, customer success managers and business development representatives.

“We will hire software engineers,” he said. “We actually find that having two locations to hire software engineers is incredibly beneficial because there are talent pools that exist in Salt Lake that don’t exist in the same breadth as in Cambridge, and vice versa. … We find that we have a better overall pool of talent.”

Thomas Wadsworth, GOED associate managing director, described Quick Base as “a very successful company growing extremely quickly.” Utah competed with other states and the Boston area on the project, he said.

“This is bringing tech jobs to downtown Salt Lake, which in the last few years has seen a little bit of growth but nowhere near the growth in the tech industry that we’ve seen down in the Lehi/Draper area,” Wadsworth said. “So, this is extremely exciting for Salt Lake City in that regard and for the state, to be able to bring high-end technology jobs to the capital city.”

The project in Hildale comes from Infab Corp., a California-based company that will put 90 jobs in the city. Founded in 1981, the company designs and manufactures radiation protection apparel and related accessories for healthcare professionals — items including lead aprons, glasses and gloves for X-ray protection.

The company was approved for a $157,951 tax credit incentive based on new stage wages of $11.1 million over five years — the average wage being $46,350 per year — and new state tax revenues of $789,753 during that period.

Hildale Mayor Donia Jessop said the $5 million project is a major step in the city moving past its history as the base of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, along with adjacent Colorado City, Arizona. She described Hildale as a former “closed” community ready to open to the world. “Hildale is ready to be on the map,” she said.

“To us, Infab is a game-changer for Hildale,” Jessop said before the GOED board vote on the incentive. “We’re really glad that they’re looking at us.”

Hildale has a workforce and an industrial park with fiber technology, which she said will enable the municipality to grow and allow families who have left Utah to get jobs to return, she said.

Already, some of those former residents have come back to the city. “And they’re coming back with education, they’re coming back with drive, they’re coming back with a determination that we are going to make Hildale great.”

“We searched throughout the U.S. for the best place to expand our operations but fell in love with Utah, its people and the opportunity to make a positive impact on the state and the community,” Don Cusick, chairman of the company’s board, said in a prepared statement.

“Infab has grown tremendously these past 10 years and we have assembled an excellent team of people along the way,” Brittany Lepley, CEO, said in a prepared statement. “We are very much looking forward to bringing this team spirit to Utah and to be the employer of choice.”

Tom Fink, vice president of operations at Infab, will take over the management of the Utah facility on June 1 under the newly created title of president of Utah operations.

“Anytime we can help a county diversify its economic base with the addition of a manufacturing project, it’s a good day,” said Theresa Foxley, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “When that manufacturing project lands in a rural community that’s striving to transform itself and bring good jobs to its residents, it’s particularly gratifying.”

Val Hale, GOED’s executive director, said Infab “will be a great addition” to Hildale. “This project,” he said, “will help rural Utah create new jobs and be a benefit to the skilled workforce in Washington County.”{/mprestriction}