SKYLINE CORRIDOR PROJECT AREA
Brice Wallace
Utah now has an even dozen inland port areas.
The Utah Inland Port Authority board, meeting in Richfield last week, approved the creation of the Skyline Corridor Project Area, expected to someday help drive economic and infrastructure development in parts of Sanpete, Sevier and Wayne counties.
The Skyline Corridor consists of a total of 1,420 acres in five zones but not in one piece of property. Areas in the project zone range in size from 0.22 acres to 330.12 acres in Ephraim, Gunnison Valley, the Salina Industrial Park, Richfield and the unincorporated Wayne County Industrial Park. Project area zones will have their own goals and objectives but can collaborate on larger projects.
“This is a really special project area for us,” Ben Hart, UIPA executive director, told the board. “Today’s adoption is very unique, and this part of the state, we’re excited to be supporting and excited to be working in.”
While the three-county region has several major highways, it has no immediate access to the national rail network and thus is heavily reliant on truck traffic to move goods. UIPA documents say there is a collaboration possibility that could lead to a transload facility in the nearby Castle Country Project Area that would provide regional rail access along the Interstate 70 corridor.
Industries of focus and recruitment for the Skyline Corridor are light to medium manufacturing, technology and remote hubs, transportation and logistics, cold storage, agribusiness and ag processing, health care and senior services, and renewable energy.
UIPA will work with the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity and local stakeholders to implement a targeted recruitment strategy focused on creating high-wage jobs and encouraging sustainable development with projects that align with environmental regulations and local development goals. The project area will also include investments in transportation infrastructure, utility improvements, and logistics-specific facilities, further supporting the economic diversification of Central Utah.
“We’re really excited about this opportunity to do the inland port. It will give us the tools we need to develop this area,” Gunnison Mayor Lori Nay said, referring to the community’s available 180 acres of land. Through partnerships, she said, infrastructure and road work will make the land shovel-ready, “and that’s what we’ve been wanting to do for a long time.”
Brayden Gardner, a Richfield city council member, said the project area will help to create new businesses and allow the area to continue to grow in a way that makes sense to the community.
Board member Jerry Stevenson told the audience that the project area creation will help keep young people in the area, “if that’s their choice and your choice,” noting that a lack of economic opportunities prompting them to leave has been a common sentiment that UIPA has heard throughout the state.
Board member Jefferson Moss said UIPA works to figure out how it can help communities.
“And sometimes unfortunately — or fortunately, depending on the situation — sometimes it does make sense to have government step in and play a role,” he said. The community is doing everything it can to provide opportunity for young people, “and this [port] is exactly what they need to really see the type of economic development that this area desperately needs,” he said. “So, I’m just very grateful that we’re moving this ahead.”
The Skyline Corridor Project Area is the state’s 12th. Others are an area in Salt Lake County, including in the Northwest Quadrant of Salt Lake City; the Iron Springs Inland Port near Cedar City; the Verk Industrial Park Project Area in Spanish Fork; the Golden Spike Project Area in Box Elder County; the Central Utah Agri-Park in Juab County; the Mineral Mountains Project Area in Beaver County; the Historic Capitol Project Area in Millard County; the Tooele Valley Project Area and Twenty Wells Project Area, both in Tooele County; the West Weber Project Area in Weber County; and the Castle Country Project Area in Carbon and Emery counties.
“We feel like 12 project areas is a pretty good mass for us. … We’re probably not going to be creating six or seven project areas every year like we have in the past,” Hart said, predicting that two to three per year is more likely going forward.
“So, they’re going to be much fewer than what we’ve done in the past two years,” he said. “We feel like we want to make sure we’re focusing on these project areas that are in front of us and ensuring that we are doing good things at optimizing these areas economically. We feel like we’re absolutely doing that.”
Hart mentioned that 26 local communities had expressed interest in having a project area and about 16 had adopted resolutions to that effect. “We would like to get to all of them,” he said. “We won’t. We can’t. … But where they make sense, we’ll continue to move forward.”