An organization contracted with the state to recruit companies to Utah and grow existing ones reports having 34 project wins during the 2016-17 fiscal year, resulting in 9,336 jobs created or retained.
The Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah), a private nonprofit organization, listed those figures when presenting its 24-page 2017-18 strategic recruiting plan to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board at the board’s July meeting.
EDCUtah’s work in 2016-17 included 38 site visits on behalf of companies considering Utah for operations, total project capital investments by companies of $915.2 million, and 6.1 million in square footage absorbed.
Those figures compare with the 2015-16 numbers in which the organization listed 13,411 jobs created and 1,538 retained with 20 project wins and just short of $1 billion in related capital investments. However, that year’s figures include a pair of large projects: SolarCity creating up to 4,000 jobs and $94 million in capital spending over 10 years, and Vivint Solar Inc. for 3,000 jobs and $91 million in capital spending over 10 years.
“It was a good year from a program standpoint,” Michael Flynn, chief operating officer, told the GOED board about the most recent fiscal year. “In terms of jobs and investment, the program we ran, it was exceptional. It was a challenging year from the standpoint of governance and some things that we went through related to different operational aspects of our business.”
EDCUtah was the subject of a state audit last year, with results revealed in October. Auditors said that while the organization has provided a valuable service to the state, “unfortunately, the organization’s successes in its operations are coupled with problematic practices in its financial management and governance.”
A leadership change occurred at about the same time. Jeff Edwards retired Nov. 1 from EDCUtah after serving as president and chief executive officer for a decade. He was succeeded by Theresa Foxley, who previously had been deputy director of corporate recruitment and business services at GOED.
“It was a tale of two years,” Flynn said. “On the program side, it was great; on some other aspects, it was challenging. I think we’re a much better organization now than we were a year ago, and a lot of that wouldn’t have happened if we’d not gone through some of the challenges.”
EDCUtah’s figures also show that since the 2006-07 fiscal year, the organization has worked to create or retain 101,405 jobs, coordinated 1,045 site visits, and earned projects with a total of $11.6 billion in capital investment and 33.9 million square feet of absorption.
About half of EDCUtah project wins advance to being awarded incentives from the GOED board, Flynn said.
“Some projects don’t qualify. They’re going to be too small or the wage [level] isn’t sufficient. Some companies don’t want to. For some companies, depending on their structure, the incentive might not be significant enough for them to go through the disclosure and certain aspects of it,” Flynn said.
“We’ve had examples of both this year: a large project that would have qualified that said, ‘You know what? We don’t want to go through the process,’ and small companies that we brought to GOED and they said, ‘Listen, this just doesn’t hit the mark,’ and the companies still decided they wanted to come here. So, there’s not a singular answer to that. It’s really all over the map.”