Business & economic development in northern Utah.

Business and economic development is happening In all corners of Utah. No longer does a startup need to be located in Salt Lake and Utah valleys; the support services to get a company up and running are available farther along--and beyond--the Wasatch Front than ever before. Rather than repeat what is going on elsewhere in the state, different regions are developing around specific competitive advantages. Nowhere is this more apparent than up north in Davis and Weber counties, where manufacturing continues to reign. But don't be deceived--economic development in these parts is just as high-tech as it is in Salt Lake City, as machinists are trading blue collars for white and becoming knowledge-workers more than ever before. Further, institutions such as Utah State University and Ogden-Weber Applied Technical College are educating a workforce that can barely keep up with the number of well-paying trade jobs becoming available. It's a winning scenario for the right kind of business looking to get started or to expand.

GROWING SMALL BUSINESSES

The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Utah State University has been serving small businesses and startups since 1980. Funded by state and federal government as well as the university, it is one of 11 such centers across the state.

"We basically serve small business through free consulting and through educational workshops and courses that we often offer in conjunction with others, such as our entrepreneur course," director Frank Prante says, highlighting the center's focus on developing new businesses.

The SBDC provides free consulting in business plan development, cash flow analysis, financial statements, advertising, marketing and more.

Prante says the center has had a "significant" impact on economic development in northern Utah, though he concedes measuring that impact in real dollars can be a challenge. "To measure the real impact, one would have to follow our businesses for several years, and that is not practical," he says. Still, the success stories find their way back to the center--such as a small business started by a student who moved away after his studies were completed. "He called me a few months later to let me know that his business was already doing close to a million dollars a year," Prante says.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Existing businesses are well-served, too. Prante tells of a manufacturer who visited the center after his manager and accountant, who had performed a break-even analysis, said he should declare bankruptcy. Using alternate tests, Prante's team was able to show how he could reduce costs in some product lines, increase sales in another, and increase prices in others still. Not only was the foreclosure stopped, the Small Business Administration (SBA) let him refinance a loan at a lower interest rate through another business he owned. "The SBA was initially reluctant to stop the foreclosure, but because we had contacts within the SBA, we were able to convince them that this business could not only survive, but prosper," Prante says.

The same tenacity brought about the Duchense Hospital. Asked to do a feasibility study when some thought the hospital unfeasible, the SBDC proved just the opposite. The hospital was built. Then there have been the times when the center will go to three or four banks in order to help a business restructure its debt. "This attitude of not giving up has helped us through the years in helping businesses," Prante says.

Working in conjunction with the Cache Valley Chamber of Commerce, Prante says the SBDC was the driving force behind business license exemptions for companies with annual revenues of less than $1,200--a boon to entrepreneurs. "This allowed the home hobbyist to experiment or operate at a small level, or the start-up to see if their idea was a good one, without having to worry about a business license," he says.

Success has its price, however. Prante wishes the SBDC's resources weren't spread so thin; he says the center serves almost three times as many businesses as when it opened in 1980, despite dwindling funds. "Demanding large numbers is a serious threat to the effectiveness of the SBDC," he admits. "Sometimes, one client alone can justify your entire year's budget."

Visit www.usu.edu/sbdc/ or call [phone] for more information.

BUILDING A WORKFORCE

The 200 or so machine shop jobs expected to open soon in the Ogden-Weber area "are not your run-of-the-mill kinds of job opportunities," according to C. Brent Wallis, president and CEO of Ogden-Weber Applied Technology College (OWATC). "These are individuals starting off at some reasonably nice wages, $17 an hour and up. You're talking in the neighborhood of 40K a year," he says.

"That's not too bad."

What's not too good is that the college is having a challenging time recruiting enough students into its training programs into order to meet the burgeoning supply of jobs--but therein lies the challenge for Wallis. "I've been getting enrollment, but the demand is still far out-sizing our ability to fulfill it."

He says the shortage of trained machinists--in particular, those trained in computer numerical control (CNC)--is the biggest challenge facing employers in northern Utah, but OWATC is charged with fixing the problem.

The OWATC "is right at the heart of the preparation of the workforce in this area," Wallis says. "We do that with our business and industrial contacts. There are probably well over 250 employers in this area that serve on what we call employer teams. They really drive and direct the curriculum and help recruit students."

The effort sees competing businesses working together to ensure enough available workers so that "they're not robbing from one another, so that they can continue doing business," Wallis says. The head of a local machine shop told Wallis that his 20-person company could be ten times as large if enough trained machinists were available. The customers would be there. "Getting the contracts is the easy part," he told Wallis.

Wallis believes the shortage of willing students is due to a lot of factors, most notably long-held perceptions against blue-collar work. "We suffer a little bit from the old vocational syndrome," Wallis concedes. But as computers play more a part in manufacturing, the chasm between blue- and white-collar work is diminishing and the image of the machine shop is changing. "[It's] the old grunt image, [but machine shops] don't have a lot of grunts anymore," he says. Many of the shops are now high tech. "Everyone is quite surprised at the different working conditions that are going on now."

Recruitment problems face ATCs nationwide, but Wallis says it helps that many have taken steps to become more like a traditional college, offering associates degrees and becoming a pathway for students when moving from high school into the workforce.

Fortunately for many students, the walk along the pathway is made easier by mentors; in the Ogden-Weber area, an aging population means many skilled workers are retiring--but not always without making one final impact. The college recruits the old to teach the young. "[Students] are taken under the arm of a master that's been in the business a long time and given that help and support," Wallis says.

Wallis says the college serves an estimated 12,000 students a year, a far cry from the 70 or so who passed through its doors when it opened in 1971. Growth has averaged eight percent a year, but there's room yet for more, he says.

"The opportunity is so great that we could grow, oh, double, triple our size every year and not keep up with employer demand."

For more information, call [phone] or visit www.owatc.com.

GETTING THE WORD OUT

Stephanie DeGraw formed Power Media Group in July 2003 when she saw a need in northern Utah for a "different kind of agency. One that provides top-notch service while still being affordable," she says. "There are many businesses that need the experience and advice of a marketing consultant but can't afford agency fees."

Power Media performs most every marketing need, from public relations to photography to billboard design and placement. DeGraw says an in-house recording studio and video production facility lets the firm offer lower costs than similar agencies. "I'd rather the client get a great product but still have money left over for advertising," she explains.

DeGraw believes one of the company's biggest accomplishments was to assist Ogden City with its efforts to launch cable television Channel 17. Her firm researched what such a public education government television station could do and wrote the policy for it. "Then their legal department was able to take it from there," she says. Power Media, as the official media representative of the Ogden Raptors baseball team, regularly broadcasts the team's games, and are instrumental in getting Northern Utah Television Channel 95 on the air.

The Raptors aren't the only group getting a boost from Power Media's efforts.

"I believe in being a mentor," she says. "We provide a place for interns to get real-life experience. Through our agency and the city television station, students from Weber State University and [area] high schools were able to build their resumes."

Visit www.powermedia.us or call [phone] for more information.

BACKING UP SALT LAKE CITY & BUILDING UP OGDEN

The Ogden Airport Gateway Center at Ogden-Hinckley Airport is home to Kemp Jet Services. Its executive terminal can land corporate and regional jets when the Salt Lake International Airport is closed due to weather or other reasons, says Bryce Gibby of Kemp Development, Inc.

This doesn't mean taking a backseat to the Salt Lake City region, however. "We are working to bring aerospace companies, with the commensurate jobs they create, to our state," Gibby says. Future buildings at the center will be built to suit specific aerospace tenants; Gibby expects to construct more than 600,000 square feet of building space on 1.3 million square feet of total airpark area. Kemp Development is marketing the center in North America and Europe.

"In three years time, working closely with city, state, and national political authorities, we have become extremely competitive with other areas in our country," Gibby says. At first not even on the radar screen of expanding aviation firms, the Ogden area is now "on the short list" of potential sites with companies such as Adam Aircraft, builders of the innovative A700 new generation jet, according to Gibby.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]