BRIGHAM CITY -- ATK Launch Systems has presented Brigham City with a check for $10,000 to help the city look at economic development.
Fred Perkins, ATK's director of engineering, presented the donation to Mayor Dennis Fife.
Perkins, a 25-year Brigham City resident, was a chief engineer for the space shuttle booster.
Perkins told the city council that ATK has both altruistic and selfish reasons for the donation -- selfish because the company's best resource is its employees, and many of them live in Brigham City; altruistic because "we want to be good neighbors."
The money will be used to develop strategies to address recent layoffs and economic impacts on Brigham City and the surrounding areas in Box Elder County. It will also fund an analysis to look at industry clusters, which are geographic concentrations of related businesses and their interconnected suppliers.
Utah, for instance, has seven statewide economic clusters, including aerospace/aviation and outdoor products/recreation. The clusters help local businesses increase productivity and compete on a global scale. The analysis will look at creating new clusters in northern Utah.
"For example, Brigham City and Box Elder County have significant industrial activity in structural steel with three Nucor facilities, GEM Buildings, T&M Manufacturing and others," said Paul Larson, Brigham's community and economic development director. "Value-added agriculture is also a potential industry cluster."
Perkins told the council, "These are tough times at ATK, but we've fought tougher battles before and have come out on top."
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