Industry Briefs are provided as a free service to our readers. Company news information may be sent to brice@slenterprise.com. The submission deadline is one week before publication.
ASSOCIATIONS
• The National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals (NAGLREP) now has its first chapter in Salt Lake City. Babs De Lay was an instructor for the organization’s convention in Palm Springs in October and met with the national director to start a local chapter. De Lay is a principal broker, Realtor and owner of Urban Utah Homes & Estates. The local chapter will have quarterly ‘lunch and learn’ get-togethers in 2018 in Salt Lake and perhaps an entry in the annual Pride Parade in Salt Lake City during the summer. The chapter will allow membership to all real estate professionals who have displayed an interest in increasing home ownership for LGBT people.
CONTESTS
• Jon Rhodes, owner and founder of Rhodes Physical Therapy, Farmington, is part of a competition for the inaugural Web.com Small Business of the Tour Award, and competition voting continues until 9:59 p.m. Mountain time Dec. 6. Earlier this year, Rhodes was recognized at the Utah Championship presented by Zions Bank as a 2017 recipient of the inaugural Web.com Small Business of the Tournament Award. Launched this past spring, the program honored one small business from each U.S. Web.com Tour tournament location for its community involvement and partnership with its local tournament. Voting for the national winner can be completed at smallbiztour.web.com. The winner will receive $25,000 worth of Web.com online marketing products and services. The winner will be announced Dec. 7 at the PGA Tour’s annual meeting in Boca Raton, Florida.
CORPORATE
• The board of directors of LifeVantage Corp., Salt Lake City, has approved up to $5 million in stock repurchases. The company expects to fund the repurchase program through cash on hand and future cash flow from operations. The authorization may be suspended or discontinued at any time and expires on Nov. 27, 2020. LifeVantage is a health, wellness and anti-aging company.
EXPANSIONS
• Go Solar Group, a Salt Lake City-based solar panel provider, has expanded into the Reno, Nevada, residential solar market. It is its first market outside Utah.
• Solstice Energy, a Utah-based solar company, has expanded into the Nevada market with a new office in North Las Vegas. Solstice Energy is a subsidiary of developer Solstice Homes. Todd Verk will lead the new office as vice president of business development and general manager for Nevada.
OUTDOOR PRODUCTS/RECREATION/SPORTS
• Solitude Mountain Resort has hired Jeff Carroll as director of sales and marketing. For the past nine years, Carroll has been director of sales and marketing at Red Lodge Mountain in Montana. Before that, he held sales positions at Tamarack Resort in Idaho and Colorado’s Copper Mountain.
PHILANTHROPY
• The Utah Safety Council is partnering with the Utah Children’s Justice Center to collect stuffed animals, soft blankets, notebooks and pens for the center. Donations may be made at the council’s office, 1574 W. 1700 S. by Dec. 19. The council also can pick up items from organizations — scheduling can be made by contacting Veronica Kitchens, home and community program manager, at vkitchens@utahsafetycouncil.org or by calling (801) 746-SAFE (7233). The center provides a comfortable, child-friendly atmosphere where children and teens receive coordinated services during the child abuse investigation process. More than 3,200 children, teens and family members receive services each year. Details about the collection campaign are at http://www.utahsafetycouncil.org/content/Members-Give-Back.aspx.
• Ricky Rubio, a point guard for the Utah Jazz, has been named an ambassador for the “5 for the Fight” campaign to raise $50 million for cancer research. Rubio recently launched a “Pledge It” campaign inviting fans to donate a specific amount of money for every assist he makes this season, with the goal of raising $150,000. Both Rubio and corporate partners are matching gifts made by fans. The first $20,000 in donations will be matched by Layton Construction Co. Details are at https://pledgeit.org/ricky-5forthefight. The “5 for the Fight” campaign was started in 2016 by Qualtrics.
• Oral surgeons Dr. Michael Harris, Dr. David Park, and Dr. Jared Brown of Utah Surgical Arts, Provo, have announced the recipient in its second annual “Share a Mile” program. Misty Orme, 39, of Sandy, will receive a complimentary procedure to replace her decaying and missing teeth. Orme started losing her teeth during her second pregnancy. Over the years, her teeth continued to break and fall out of her mouth. Orme was selected from 422 applicants to receive the “All-on-4” Treatment Concept which typically would cost about $40,000. Utah Surgical Arts is teaming up with Dr. Joe Jeppson of Jeppson Dental and dental lab DSG Fine Arts to provide the treatment.
REAL ESTATE
• Oakwood Homes, a Colorado-based private homebuilder with its Utah Division headquartered in Murray, has announced a new home development to be built in American Fork. The development, named Hansen Ranch, will be on former horse ranch property at 1100 E. 400 N. It will feature 90 single-family homes. Sales will begin in February but interested homebuyers can register now at https://oakwoodhomesco.com/communities/hansen-ranch/. The company also has expanded its floorplan offerings at Holbrook Farms in Lehi.
• Drawbridge Realty has chosen the Salt Lake City Asset Services team of Cushman & Wakefield to provide property management, client accounting, engineering operations, and project and development services for its Airport Technology Park portfolio, totaling nearly 1 million square feet. Two tenants, Unisys and L3 Technologies, occupy the eight-building, 80-acre office/R&D campus. The project also has the ability for an additional 70,000-square-foot, build-to-suit building. Mike Richmond and Dana Baird of Cushman & Wakefield’s leasing team partnered with Asset Services to secure the assignment. It is the first new property management assignment for the Asset Services team since Cushman & Wakefield acquired Cushman & Wakefield Commerce earlier this year.
RECOGNITIONS
• Deer Valley Resort has been named the best ski resort in the U.S. and the Waldorf Astoria Park City has been named best ski hotel in the U.S. by the World Ski Awards. This is the fifth consecutive year for Deer Valley Resort to earn the honor. The awards are based on votes cast by travel consumers and ski tourism professionals worldwide. The World Ski Awards is part of the World Travel Awards.
• Salt Lake City has announced the two winners of the Home Innovation Competition for high-quality, innovative and affordable single-family home designs: AJR Atelier Jorg Rugemer’s “Slim House” and Redfish Development’s “N3.” The competition was sponsored by Salt Lake City’s Housing Innovation Lab, created in 2016 to advance innovation in affordable housing design, construction, and finance through education, collaboration and experimentation. Encouraging innovative housing solutions is an important component of the “Growing SLC” Housing Plan to address the city’s housing crisis. The “Slim House” provides a model for an approach to a narrow lot that provides a high-quality of living within an optimized footprint. The city has entered a design contract with AJR to bring the design of the house to reality on a city-owned lot. Groundbreaking is expected in 2018. The “N3” design provides a net-zero model that focuses on sustainability and minimizing energy costs.
• Amberlie Phillips, chief development officer at YWCA, Utah has been selected to participate in the Allstate Foundation’s Greater Good Nonprofit Leadership program. She is one of 31 people nationwide to be selected from more than 400 applicants for the program, which pairs nonprofit executives with the best teaching minds in leadership and development. The program offers cohort-based academic instruction and one-on-one executive coaching from Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management, as well as travel and lodging to attend sessions in Chicago. Each participant also receives a stipend towards additional education and development programming.
RETAIL
• Piphany, a Salt Lake City-based direct-retail fashion company, has hired Katy Holt-Larsen as chief performance officer and Stacy Lynn Schindler as national director of field development. Holt-Larsen will be responsible for field development, marketing, stylist support, onboarding. and standards and practices. She has more than 25 years of experience in organizational leadership, product strategy, sustainable growth and sales, marketing and distributor relations. She also has extensive direct-selling industry experience, holding the position of both vice president and president of critical markets and global field development, as well as fulfilling the role of executive director of a direct selling nonprofit social arm. Schindler will be responsible for leading the field representatives from coast-to-coast, and providing field development solutions to drive success. She has more than 20 years of experience in sales, business development and training. She has led sales management and training teams in the direct-sales industry, as well as in the retail and financial realms.