Iron County economic development director reports seven committed industrial projects, expanded inland port and small-business grants

David Johnson, Iron County economic development director, told the commission on Monday that a year of proactive outreach has resulted in seven projects that have committed or purchased property in the county and wider regional coordination intended to help recruit additional employers.

Johnson said the Utah Inland Port expansion and adjacent industrial parks have grown from roughly 900 acres to about 2,300 acres by adding Silver Hills Industrial, Lakeside Industrial and an adjacent turf farm; the port functions like a redevelopment area for newly generated revenue and can be used together with state incentives.

The impetus for the report, Johnson said, was to summarize fiscal-year outreach and retention work. "We responded to about 20 state RFIs," he said, adding that 12 of 14 local site tours and employer meetings came from the county office’s proactive outreach rather than only from state solicitations. He listed seven projects that have either committed or purchased land, including Project Hive, a rotational-molding plastics manufacturer expected to bring about 30 jobs to Silver Hills, and Project Bird, a food distributor planning a larger local facility. Johnson said Project Mueller involves a Korean company that purchased the former Copper Mueller building, and that American Pacific (Project AMPAC) has announced a roughly $100 million capital investment. He said he could not disclose some firm names because of nondisclosure agreements.

Johnson also summarized the county’s small-business grant program. Applications last year totaled roughly three-quarters of a million dollars in requests from 44 businesses; finalists requested about $132,000 while the county budgeted about $65,000. Winners included Fire and Smoke Barbecue (a Cedar location), The Pub (Center Street, Cedar City), a Brian Head Mall operator and Lone Wolf Precision (fabrication). Johnson described a $50,000 governor’s rural development seed grant supporting an Innovation Center and makerspace partnership of SUU, Southwest Tech, SBDC, the chamber and others, and said those investments have a high return for start-ups.

Johnson also highlighted RailSync, a transload operation tied to BZI Innovation Park. He said the transload facility has moved hundreds of rail cars off long-haul trucks and produced short-haul trucking opportunities locally. He described a geothermal effort (Project Framed) that is coordinating with SUU on workforce curriculum and exploring direct power to industrial sites to bypass grid constraints, and he told commissioners he had intervened with Rocky Mountain Power to reduce transformer delays for a small retail project.

The director asked commissioners to join upcoming tours of existing manufacturers to help strengthen retention. Johnson told the commission he was working regionally with Washington and Beaver counties and had received seed funding from the governor’s office to expand the Southern Utah Economic Alliance.

The county commission did not take a formal vote on Johnson’s report; it was presented as a departmental update.