Priming Hill's economic pump

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It's always funny -- but admittedly frustrating -- to be reminded that the Top of Utah isn't really on the Legislature's radar screen. As the old joke goes, for people living in Salt Lake City and southward, Idaho starts just north of Lagoon. It means lawmakers from our region have a tougher time looking out for our interests.

That's the only conclusion we could reach the other day when a Salt Lake City newspaper reported on the long-planned business and commercial development on Hill Air Force Base's west side that "legislators had never heard of."

We should really get those lawmakers a map.

The project -- Hill's West Side Development Enhanced Use Lease Project -- which the Standard-Examiner has addressed in dozens of news articles and editorials over the past couple of years, could be the largest single economic development venture in our region since the build-up of Hill and ATK (Thiokol). Apparently some lawmakers were caught unaware because 1) sadly, they don't subscribe to the Standard and 2) nobody promoting the project had yet come asking for money to help get it off the ground.

The funds needed this year total $5 million for infrastructure upgrades. The whole idea behind an "enhanced use lease" is that the military installation and national defense will benefit from the private development on currently unused federal land on the base. Over the life of this project, Hill and the Air Force will benefit to the tune of about $100 million worth of new and/or replaced buildings and infrastructure, paid for by a combination of public and private investment -- with the public portion being a tiny slice of the whole.

At the same time, the private developers will unleash a mind-boggling return on investment: thousands and thousands of jobs, most in high-tech industries like composite-manufacturing, research and development, and other industries related to aerospace, the military and, specifically, Hill. The developer, Sunset Ridge Development Partners LLC, was chosen in August by Hill Air Force Base officials as the highest bidder for phase one of the development, is a partnership of Salt Lake City-based Woodbury Corp., Hunt ELP Ltd., of El Paso, Texas and Flintridge Partners LLC, of Irvine, Calif.

There's more to Hill's west side development than new business, though. It will help further inoculate the base during any future rounds of base closures in the decades ahead. And, as we've written before in this space, it will strengthen our economic position to such an extent that, heaven forbid, if Hill were to close, it would soften the blow. But the latter is a worst-case scenario that likely will never come to pass.

For now, it's important for state lawmakers to remember that Hill Air Force Base is one of the entire state's strongest economic engines. A 2005 University of Utah study found that Hill, at that time, meant $2.54 billion to the Utah economy. Tens of thousands of people are employed there. Those people and their families purchase goods and services in the community, keeping thousands more employed. If this west-side development goes forward, it will mean millions of square feet of new office space and manufacturing, along with whatever retail development is needed to support the base- and military-related growth.

That $5 million is a sound investment.

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