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AGRICULTURE
• Federal Agriculture Mortgage Corp., the nation’s secondary market for agricultural credit, has announced that two people have been elected as the newest members of the company’s board of directors. One is W. David Hemingway, who spent his entire 42-year career in banking at Zions Bancorporation and its affiliates, where he focused on investments, capital markets, and public finance and served as an executive officer from 1984-2015. Hemingway also has significant experience serving as a board member for other institutions with a national scope, including previously serving as a member of Farmer Mac’s board from 1996-2004. He served on the board of directors of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle during that same time period and also previously served as chairman of the Utah Bankers Association. Hemingway joins four other board members elected each year by holders of Class A voting common stock.
• A week after its launch, the “Farmers Feeding Utah” campaign identified its first “Miracle Project,” with a planned distribution of Utah lamb to several Utah chapters of the Navajo nation in Southeastern Utah. The chapters include the Mexican Water, Aneth, Oljato, and Navajo Mountain chapters. The campaign is organized by the Utah Farm Bureau Federation. The farm bureau and the Hunger Solutions Institute are working with the Utah Division of Emergency Management, USU Extension-San Juan County and local food pantries to facilitate the distribution of lamb to those in need.
ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT
• The Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board, at its May meeting, amended a film incentive for South Bay Productions LLC for its episodic thriller “Wireless.” The company had been approved in November for a cash rebate of up to $315,836 but was required to meet a $1 million spending threshold in Utah to be eligible for that amount. The estimated spending on the production is $770,000, and the board revised the incentive to be a rebate for up to $154,000.
BANKING
• Bank of Utah, Ogden, reopened 14 of its 17 branches to walk-in customers on May 18. The bank continued to operate its drive-through lanes while its doors were closed. Hours of operation for locations will continue to be 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. for drive-through and in-branch visits, where possible. Due to local government mandates, the bank’s Redwood and Heber branches will maintain drive-through services only and City Creek will remain closed to the public. Following state mandates, Bank of Utah will enact new safety measures to keep customers and employees safe.
CONSTRUCTION
• R&O Construction, Ogden, has announced that Mike Nicholls, a vice president at the company for the past 28 years, has retired. Prior to working for R&O Construction, Nicholls worked for Opheikens & Co. He led R&O’s Special Projects Division concurrent to overseeing R&O’s warehouse, manpower, safety and warranty operations. R&O also announced that Neil Manning has been promoted to vice president of special projects. He has been a project manager since 2011 and will be taking on the roles and responsibilities that Nicholls oversaw prior to his retirement. Manning graduated from Weber State University with degrees in construction management and business administration.
DIVIDENDS
• The board of directors of Extra Space Storage Inc., Salt lake City, has declared a quarterly dividend of 90 cents per share on the common stock of the company for the 2020 second quarter. The dividend is payable June 30 to stockholders of record June 15. The company is a real estate investment trust that owns and/or operates 1,852 self-storage properties.
EDUCATION/TRAINING
• Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, has set aside $10 million in emergency aid funds to help current and new students experiencing financial and healthcare hardships as a result of COVID-19. In addition, the online, nonprofit university is working to raise another $10 million in matching donations. WGU’s emergency aid fund will help mitigate those financial disruptions with non-tuition emergency aid, an Enhanced Financial Support Fund, funding for interrupted terms, Bright Future Scholarships, and additional financial support.
INVESTMENTS
• PathologyWatch, Salt Lake City, has announced a $5 million Series A funding, led by SpringTide Investments and Rock Creek Capital, with additional funding by individual investors. PathologyWatch is focused on intuitive, easy-to-implement digital dermatopathology solutions that can speed the diagnostic process while reducing costs to clinics and enhancing patient care. It will use the funding to strengthen outreach to dermatology clinics nationwide.
MANUFACTURING
• Purple Innovation Inc., a Lehi-based comfort products manufacturer, has announced the pricing of an underwritten secondary public offering of nearly 10.8 million shares of its Class A common stock sold by InnoHold LLC. The shares of Class A common stock were sold at a price of $10.50 per share. The offering was upsized from the previously announced offering size of 9 million shares of Class A common stock. The underwriters have a 30-day option period to purchase up to 1.6 million additional shares of Class A common stock from the selling stockholders at the same price per share. The offering closed May 19. InnoHold will receive all of the net proceeds from the offering. Purple is not selling any shares of Class A common stock in the offering and will not receive any proceeds from the offering. BofA Securities and Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. acted as joint book-running managers for the offering. Raymond James, KeyBanc Capital Markets and Wedbush Securities acted as co-managers.
PHILANTHROPY
• Squatty Potty, a St. George-based toilet stools company, has announced a national partnership with the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation to continue providing support for research, education and support programs related to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The partnership with the foundation includes a direct donation of $25,000 as well as several promotional campaigns, including one in May in honor of World IBD Day (May 19), in which all of the net proceeds from sales (up to $25,000) on SquattyPotty.com will be donated to the foundation to help realize its vision of a future free from Crohn’s and colitis.
REAL ESTATE
• Hardware Apartments, a new multifamily community in downtown Salt Lake City, has been sold by the developers, SALT Development and KBS Real Estate Investment Trust III, to Oakmont Properties of Sacramento, California. It is the largest total dollar multifamily asset sale ever in Utah, topping the 2019 sale of 4th West Apartments, another SALT Development apartment community. Financial details were not released. Hardware Apartments features 453 luxury apartment homes. The property was nearly 45 percent leased at the time of sale. The transaction was announced by the Salt Lake City office of CBRE. Eli Mills and Patrick Bodnar of CBRE represented both the buyer and seller. It is the second acquisition in the market for Oakmont.
• CBRE’s Salt Lake City office has been selected to oversee the leasing and management of South Towne Corporate Center, two Class A office towers on nearly 11 acres in Sandy. Scott Wilmarth, Nadia Letey and Melina Miramontes will oversee the leasing of the property. There are two full floors available for lease in the center’s total 262,219 square feet. The buildings are owned by EverWest and Independencia, two institutional real estate investment firms.
• Mountain West Commercial Real Estate (MW) has opened an office at 335 E. St. George Blvd., St. George and added three brokers to the MW team: Doug Scheel, Cody Felts and Troy Scheel.
RECOGNITIONS
• CRN, a brand of The Channel Company, has named Kerry Desberg, chief marketing officer at Impartner, Salt Lake City, as one of its “2020 Women of the Channel.” Impartner is a partner relationship management and channel management platform provider. The CRN editorial team selects the honorees for their contributions to channel advocacy, growth, thought leadership and dedication to the IT channel.
• The Petco Foundation and dog trainer Victoria Stilwell have honored Darrell McCurtain of Park City as one of five finalists for an “Unsung Hero” award for his extraordinary efforts saving animal lives. A Navajo tribe member, McCurtain works to improve the conditions for pets on Utah reservations and has saved thousands of animal lives. The honor includes a $10,000 grant for his animal welfare organization, Nuzzles & Co., where McCurtain is intake director. The private, nonprofit organization in Summit County was originally known as Friends of Animals Utah and has found homes for more than 20,000 pets.
TECHNOLOGY/LIFE SCIENCES
• Qualtrics, a Salt Lake City-based customer experience management company, has appointeSd Omar Garriott to lead the growth and momentum of its education team, aimed at improving the student, campus, faculty/staff and alumni experience across K-12 and higher education around the world. Garriott is responsible for driving the global strategy of the company’s education vertical across sales, marketing, product and customer success. Garriott has more than a decade of experience at technology companies. He joined Qualtrics in March of this year. Prior to Qualtrics, Garriott co-founded a new business for Salesforce in K-12 education, as senior director for Education Cloud. Garriott previously launched and led the student/university team at LinkedIn and led iPad marketing for K-12 and higher education institutions at Apple. Garriott started his career as a Teach for America teacher.
• Lightstream, a Salt Lake City company focused on cloud security, network transformation and managed services, has hired Rafal Los as chief security strategist. Los will be responsible for security innovation across Lightstream’s service platform, including new offerings and partnerships, as well as serving as a security thought leader and evangelist on behalf of Lightstream. Los has spent almost 20 years in management and executive roles with technology companies, including General Electric, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Optiv. Prior to joining Lightstream, Los served as vice president of cloud security at Armor Cloud Security.