UIPA considering a second satellite port in Spanish Fork

Brice Wallace 

Fresh on the heels of approving a plan for an inland port near Cedar City, the Utah Inland Port Authority is considering doing the same for land in Spanish Fork.

While the Cedar City project area contains 899 acres, the proposed Spanish Fork area would consist of a 2,200-acre industrial park, with about 10 million square feet of industrial facilities. It would be west of Interstate 15. Inside the project area are Spanish Fork Municipal Airport, the Utah County Jail and Utah County Mosquito Abatement.

The UIPA board discussed the proposal at its{mprestriction ids="1,3"} most recent meeting and will consider its approval at an upcoming meeting.

While some speakers during the board’s meeting raised concerns about environment, health, pollution, traffic congestion and other impacts the project might bring, others said development would be beneficial to the city and broader area by improving the movement of goods and attracting companies to the area. A few speakers represented developers involved in the plan development. Private-sector companies involved include Colmena, Wadsworth, Boyer and the Gardner Group.

“The proposed area fits the economic development vision and it intends to recruit new companies to create economic opportunities for residents in the Greater Spanish Fork area,” said Scott Wolford, vice president over UIPA’s business development team.

Wolford noted the area has access to I-15, U.S. Route 6, a Union Pacific rail line and the municipal airport.

“As this project area develops out, rightsizing future logistical assets to optimize freight movement will leverage new opportunities throughout the region,” he said.

The project plan “syncs up very, very well with different things that Spanish Fork City has been working on for decades,” said Dave Anderson, community development director for Spanish Fork. With access to various modes of transportation, “we believe strongly that Spanish Fork is the appropriate place for commerce to occur,” he said.

Predecessors involved in the area did well in building infrastructure, acquiring rights to water and power and other activities to get it to this stage, he said.

“We feel like this particular proposed project area is a great way to pay things forward, so to speak, and provide future generations with the same opportunities that previous economic development projects have done” for the area, Anderson said.

The city already has used tools that would be implemented in the project area for economic development, job growth and capital development, he added.

“But we really view this as an opportunity to put the right type of development at the right locations, organized and planned in the right ways, so as to develop an asset that is great for our city, for Utah Valley and for the state,” he said.

Jeff Grasso, managing partner at Vesta Realty Partners, said the area near the municipal airport has the potential to become a key logistics center in the Mountain West.

“It maintains multimodal transportation, a deep pool of skilled workforce and a community that is attractive for companies and new businesses,” Grasso said.

John Bankhead, a managing partner at Vesta, said the public and private sectors working together can create “great things.”

“In Spanish Fork, we’ve had a wonderful opportunity to work with the city and the staff to put together a plan that will unlock the potential for a multimodal logistics center that I believe can accommodate the various needs across the state,” Bankhead said.

Despite its positives, both Grasso and Seth Perrins, Spanish Fork city manager, said a lack of infrastructure has hindered efforts to develop the project area in the past. While the area “has long been on the radar of industrial development,” it never landed projects because of that issue, Perrins said.

“Those projects have left Utah, they have left Utah County, and we have been unable to overcome the lack of infrastructure that we have,” Perrins said. “We’re excited for the opportunity to partner with the port to allow this area to develop some of the revenue to help with that public infrastructure. …”

David Hennefer, a vice president at The Ritchie Group, thanked UIPA for its work on the project. “Very sincerely, I and our company are grateful that the inland port exists that you can play this kind of role in helping economic development and expansion, particularly of this project area in Spanish Fork,” he said.

Jerry Stevenson, a member of the UIPA board and a state senator, praised the stakeholders involved in the Spanish Fork plan and what it could lead to in the future.

“Seventy or 80 years from now, what you’re doing today is going to have a monumental impact upon Utah County and the city of Spanish Fork,” Stevenson said. “I just commend you for moving forward with this at this point in time.”

Prior to the Spanish Fork project area discussion, Ben Hart, UIPA’s executive director, said the authority’s goals include “creating economic opportunity in more diverse places across the state of Utah.”

“We’ve got to create economic focal points off of where we’re currently just trying to jam all of the [highway] traffic,” he said. “We’ve got to create economic job bases in new places and ensure we’re reversing traffic flows where we can. We want to make sure that people can live, work and play in their communities that they live in.”

The 899 acres near Cedar City in April became the first approved inland port in a rural part of Utah. The Iron Springs Inland Port includes 825 acres owned by Commerce Crossroads Logistics Park and 74 acres owned by Savage Railport-Southern Utah. When fully developed, the industrial park and transportation hub are expected to help companies move goods in and out of the area, create high-paying jobs and generally boost economic opportunities throughout Southern Utah. The hub is a collaboration among UIPA, steel producer BZI and Commerce Crossroads, one of BZI’s affiliated companies.

The Commerce Crossroads industrial park will start with office buildings, on-site products and services to construct tailored processing facilities for customers, and it will operate a new rail transload service, RailSync, as well as an expanded short-line service to individual facilities.

Hart has said the UIPA board likely will consider several other project area proposals from throughout Utah over the next few months.{/mprestriction}