Utah Business and Economic Development

FastTrac connects entrepreneurs to the best resources available to help them pursue and realize their entrepreneurial dreams. The program provides small business owners with business insights, strategic visioning guidance, professional networking connections and other resources, preparing them to create a new business or expand an existing enterprise.

The alliance works with the Service Corps of Retired Executives, the Small Business Development Center and Grow Utah Ventures, a local venture capital firm, among others, to provide training, development and counseling opportunities to new companies.

“We felt like this needed to be a regional strategy, not something that stops at the county line,” says Ann Millner, president of Weber State College. “We are trying to take people that are already here and create and develop growth.”

Utah has sweetened the pot as it tries to get filmmakers to shoot more productions in the state.

Incentives approved for 28 companies ultimately could lead to 10,000 new jobs, new state revenue of $476 million, capital investment of $2.7 billion and new wages of $4.6 billion over the next decade.

In December, after Barnes Aerospace hinted it might expand its Singapore plant rather than grow in Ogden, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development Board approved a $10.1 million incentive to entice the company to stay in Utah.

The company has said its new jobs will pay an average of $42,172, about 225 percent of the Iron County median wage, according to board documents.

Utah was behind only Michigan, Virginia, Colorado and Arkansas. Utah had 4.83 percent of all traffic to the 50 state tourism Web sites during the month.

Within five years, USU hopes to have similar community innovation centers at sites in Tooele, Uinta Basin, Snow College and the College of Eastern Utah, Chandler said.

"To get 224 percent (of the county median wage) in the valley here is quite unusual," said Michael Nelson, in charge of corporate recruitment and incentives for GOED.