Despite spotlight down south, things going just fine up north

Brice Wallace 

Other areas of the Wasatch Front may have been in a brighter economic spotlight in recent years, but speakers at a recent event in Ogden say Northern Utah is doing quite well, thank you very much.

“For years now, I feel like Utah County and Silicon Slopes and Salt Lake have been getting all the attention,” Jason Pryzybyla, acquisitions and development senior associate at Woodbury Corp., said at the ULI (Urban Land Institute) Utah event titled “What’s Up, Up North?”

“And I’ve loved flying under radar up here in Davis and Weber County, but I think the secret’s getting out and … I think the growth is as big as Utah County, if not bigger, in certain areas up here.”

While Hill Air Force Base remains the area’s main economic engine, panelists pointed to several projects that amount to “a lot of really terrific activity up here,” according to Chris Roybal, president of the Northern Utah Economic Alliance. Among them are Business Depot Ogden, projects in downtown Ogden, the Falcon Hill Aerospace Research Park and Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Roy Innovation Center.

Business Depot Ogden (BDO) is a 1,118-acre industrial business park that once was Defense Depot Ogden. It’s a combination of redeveloped World War II-era buildings and new construction for warehouses, manufacturing and offices.

Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell said the military installation had 4,500 workers, and when it closed “everybody was really in a panic about what was going to happen out there.”

A partnership between the city and The Boyer Co. had a build-out plan calling for development at the site over five decades. However, Caldwell said, BDO looks like it will be finished in the next year or two — about 30 years ahead of schedule. It’s already home to 8,000 jobs.

“It is an enormous success story,” Caldwell said. “And when we bring site selectors and other people in and show them what is going on at BDO, some of the other people that we’re competing with say it’s an unfair advantage” because of the strong BDO partnerships.

Falcon Hill occupies 550 acres at Hill Air Force Base, including space inside and outside the base and along several miles of Interstate 15 frontage. A public-private partnership between Sunset Ridge Development Partners (a partnership of Woodbury Corp. and Hunt Cos.) and the U.S. Air Force, Falcon Hill last year surpassed 1 million square feet of commercial development and $500 million in project investment and by the end of this year will have nearly 1.5 million square feet developed.

Another Woodbury-Hunt project near the base is the Roy Innovation Center. Its 900,000 square feet and four buildings will serve as headquarters for Northrop Grumman’s “Sentinel” program, a weapons program to replace the Minuteman III nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles. The company expects the Sentinel program to employ thousands of people there and elsewhere until at least 2075.

The ULI Utah event took place at The Monarch event space in downtown Ogden. It’s one of about a dozen downtown Ogden buildings that have been redeveloped by Fischer Regan Enterprises LLC. Owner Thaine Fischer said the company now specializes in turning old, historic buildings full of pigeons, raccoons and broken windows into “hip, cool, urban space.” Three more such projects are planned in the next five years as the company focuses on arts, historical and cultural districts.

“And we found a pretty remarkable stat,” Fischer said, “and the stat that we found when we were looking all over the United States was, we’ve never found an arts district in America that has failed — ever.”

Many such districts exist in what once were the worst areas in the communities but became immensely successful, he said.

The Monarch was built in 1929 and served as an automotive garage for the neighboring Bigelow Hotel. Now its features include an event space, a restaurant, retail and arts studios.

Caldwell described the evolution of Ogden over the years from having more millionaires per capita than any other city in the U.S. in the 1900s. But train traffic dwindled by the 1950s and the city lost its economic driver, he said. About 25 years ago, 35 of the 43 buildings on Historic 25th Street were vacant and boarded-up. It’s now considered one of North America’s top Main Streets, he said.

“And it’s been a really invigorating thing to see,” the mayor said.

The post-Olympics period also included Ogden rebranding as an outdoor recreation hub, with several companies moving in to capitalize on the quality of life the area offers, and they served as catalysts for other companies to do the same, Caldwell said.

Northern Utah now has lots of job growth, including high-paying jobs that attract people from throughout the U.S., as well as “a very stable” economy.

“We got a lot of work that goes on in aerospace and defense. There are not a lot of other places that are as recession-proof — knock on wood, because we’re all hearing scary things about that — but we do have a real stable base. …”

Meanwhile, downtown Ogden had no residential building permits issued for 20 years but in the past two years the city has issued permits for nearly 3,000 units there, he said.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure going on right now. We’re really planning for the future,” Caldwell said, adding that the planning has taken into account the needs for the next 30 to 40 years. “We want to be prepared for that, but we don’t want to suffocate the quality of life that we enjoy in Northern Utah,” he said.

Roybal said the Weber/Davis area is home to 625,000 people, “so it’s a pretty big demographic engine up here.” But among the alliance’s goals is to have more “employment centers” in the area. It currently has many people leave home to work, mostly in Salt Lake County.

“We’d like to see that reversed a little bit,” Roybal said. “I don’t think that’s going to be sustainable over the next 10 to 20 years.”

Even with all the positives over the last few years, speakers at the event said even more growth is possible if the Legacy Highway is expanded from Farmington into Syracuse or even BDO, FrontRunner is “double-tracked” to allow shorter wait times between trains, and when highway interchanges at 5600 South in Roy and 1800 North in Sunset are completed.

During a Q&A portion of the event, speakers were asked about perceptions of Northern Utah. Fischer said quick access to world-class skiing and other activities allows outsiders to “fall in love with the community. … People just can’t believe all of the amazing assets this community has.”

“When we host people from out of state,” Roybal said, “first of all, Salt Lake to Ogden is not a big deal if you’re from L.A., Chicago or Atlanta, right? And when they get up here, they’re pleasantly surprised at how cool the culture is, quite frankly. I don’t think a lot of them were expecting to see what they see in downtown Ogden. …I just know when we host people here, they really like it.”

Caldwell said the city is home to several high-profile events and great places like The Monarch.

“We give people environments like this that have a cultural and unique experience here you can’t get in Kaysville, you can’t get in Farmington, you can’t get a lot of other places. We’ve tried to build on our assets and give people reasons to come up and see it with fresh eyes and do things here and have an emotional experience while they’re here,” the mayor said.

“We’re a lot different than most of the other cities along the Wasatch Front and that’s something we take pride in, and we need to build on our strengths.”