EDCUtah seeks to ease way for major projects

By Brice Wallace

Economic development officials want companies considering Utah for large expansions or relocations to have more and better information about their location options in the state.

The Economic Development Corporation of Utah is working on a “megasite” certification process that could smooth the way for companies considering Utah for “landmark” projects — 1,000 or more jobs and $1 billion or more in capital expenditure — by evaluating large land sites ahead of time.

“In a nutshell, the idea is you invest a lot of time and money into large land sites to evaluate those land sites to a really granular level, to remove the risk of the unknown from companies that are looking to make a significant investment,” Michael Flynn, EDCUtah’s chief operating officer, told the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board at its most recent meeting. Having information on hand would be helpful to companies that say they want to build a large project “‘but we want to make sure there’s nothing on a given site that we don’t understand,’” he said.

“In a nutshell, we’re trying to get out of the ‘I don’t know’ business. … The idea behind this is, we do all of those studies in advance.”

The idea of megasite certification has been around for several years and been used quite a bit in the Southeast to help inform companies looking for locations for auto assembly, tire and carbon fiber manufacturing, aerospace work and consumer products production, he said. Eight states have state-sponsored programs, and 11 more have programs sponsored by other entities, such as utilities. They have a total of 113 “deal-ready” locations.

EDCUtah’s work on the certification process began about a year and a half ago. Students at the University of Utah’s Master of Real Estate Development program embarked on a semester-long study, including looks at programs in other states. The students interviewed lots of real estate brokers, developers, site selectors and others for input. Their study indicated that 20 locations in Utah could be megasites.

The “sweet spot” for Utah appears to be 400-acre sites, which Flynn said would provide Utah with more flexibility than other states. In the Southeast, some states have sites of up to 1,500 acres.

The thinking is that a Utah megasite would be used by a single company, so what is being developed is not a certification program for industrial parks, Flynn said.

“These [large] projects don’t come around every year. I don’t know if we’ve got a billion-dollar project on our books right now. So the idea is, we’re sort of swinging for the fences here. This would be an every two-, three-, four-year project process,” he said.

Utah County wants to be a beta site for the program and county officials have identified a site shown to manufacturing companies whose representatives have said it has too many unknowns regarding infrastructure, water and other issues. That “straw man” certification could be completed by June, with a statewide rollout of the program by year-end. Some Utah communities have programs that incorporate elements of what the state is undertaking, but a state program “really gives everybody the same sheet music to play,” Flynn said.

Among questions to be addressed are which Utah entity will “own” the program, who will pay the certification costs, how many sites to name and where they should be located. Initial screenings of a site likely would cost $10,000, but a more in-depth engineering analysis would be $100,000 to $200,000.

Site consultants who scout locations for companies have told EDCUtah officials that Utah likely is off the radar for certain large projects because of a lack of site details. “Some of the feedback we’ve gotten from consultants is, ‘There are projects you guys aren’t even seeing because you’re not a known commodity for an auto assembly plant,’ so we’re not on their list,” Flynn said.

The megasite certification program development comes on the heels of a recent update of Utah’s “SURE Sites” website — SURE stands for “Select Utah Real Estate.” EDCUtah and GOED launched the website in 2007 as a real estate database to help prospective project companies find information about shovel-ready locations in the state. Partners in that project have included Rocky Mountain Power, GIS Planning Inc. and the Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center. Utahsuresites.com currently has 259 sites listed.