By Brice Wallace
Whatever issues Salt Lake City officials have with the proposed inland port near Salt Lake City International Airport, panelists at a gathering last week to discuss the port expressed hope that the troubles do not prompt litigation.
City and state officials have been at loggerheads over governance issues related to the port ever since SB234 was passed during the final days of this year’s general legislative session. SB234 created the Utah Inland Port Authority to oversee the development of the port in the city’s Northwest Quadrant.
Disagreements over taxing, land-use control and other matters have been the subject of negotiations but have not been resolved. Gov. Gary Herbert has said he would call a special session of the Legislature once those issues are ironed out.
Speaking at Envision Utah’s spring breakfast, panelists worried that a lawsuit could delay the project’s development, increase its cost and send the wrong message to the marketplace.
“I think it’s unfortunate whenever you have government entities that aren’t seeing things eye-to-eye,” said Natalie Gochnour, director of the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah. “I think that we’re dealing with the people’s business, the public’s money, and so we have an obligation to try and stay at the table and work through these things. They’re very complicated. They’re difficult.”
Gochnour said costs related to the building of the Legacy Parkway “swelled” because of litigation.
“I just want to throw out this notion that it’s in nobody’s interest to have a lawsuit, and everybody loses something. Nobody wins with this,” she said. “So, my pitch will be: Let’s figure this out and get to a compromise.”
Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber, noted that the city, governor and Legislature are committed to having an inland port.
“What we’ve seen in the media, in my opinion too often and too much, is about the politics of the inland port,” Miller said. “I think we need to get refocused on the substance of what I think is a generational opportunity for this state.
“When we let politics trump the substance, the message that that sends to the marketplace — spoiler alert: it’s not a good message that we send to the marketplace. So I hope that we’re not going to let politics trump what is a very important project for the prosperity of our state.”
Adam Wasserman, managing director at GLDPartners, said the marketplace includes people involved in risk capital, shipping and companies that look at Utah and the port as strategic. “You don’t want to introduce a whole lot of doubt,” he said.
While the panel discussion included talk about other challenges, much of it focused on the immense positives that panelists said the port would bring to the local and state economies.
Logistics related to the movement of inbound and outbound products likely will be at the heart of the port’s early operations, but Wasserman said it is “not an end but a means to an end.”
“Logistics-enabled investment attraction, logistics-enabled economic development is really what the large prize is about,” he said. “The idea of a fully integrated investment district that integrates air, rail, road and ocean is pretty magical, and for a place that’s low-cost, business-friendly, pretty sophisticated about what it does and how it does it, an educated workforce and pretty sophisticated … and important tech base, the opportunity is much larger than logistics.”
Two-way logistics should be a goal, with inbound goods coming from other countries and outbound goods made in Utah leaving for outside markets. “Establish the logistics part, but with a mind toward making that a manufacturing zone for the outbound [products],” he said.
“What we’re going for,” Miller said, “is that gold medal of high-tech manufacturing that will be the economic game-changer for our state for the next 50 years. That’s the opportunity.”
Gochnour said the port could have three “waves” of economic impact. One is the jobs created by its construction. Second is the development of warehousing, distribution, manufacturing and logistics operations. Third — the largest — is creating a connection between Salt Lake City and the global economy in the midst of an era when economies are morphing from retail to fulfillment. Giving both urban and rural parts of Utah access to the global economy, “that’s the real economic benefit here,” she said.
The port likely would join a list of visionary projects that have bolstered Utah’s economy, she said, with the list including the 2002 Olympics, the Intermountain Power Project, Hill Air Force Base, Trax and FrontRunner.
“We have this opportunity right now,” she said, “with an expanded airport, with Union Pacific’s rail network here, the engaged leadership of the business community, with a lot of advantages we’ll keep talking about, to do something special — not for us right now but for people that come after us.”