435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Explore the heartbeat of Southern Utah with the 435 Podcast, your go-to source for all things local in Washington County. Stay ahead of the curve with our in-depth coverage, expert analysis, and captivating interviews. Whether you're a resident or visitor, our podcast is your key to unlocking the latest happenings and trends in St. George and the surrounding areas. Tune in now to stay informed and connected with our thriving community!
435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Synergy in Southern Utah: Uniting for Economic Success
Unlock the secrets behind St. George City's economic development strategies with insights from Chad Thomas, the Economic Development Director, and David Cordero, the Communications and Marketing Director. Discover how the city's economic policies are shaped by local elections and sales taxes, and what the arrival of a second Costco means for residents and businesses across Southern Utah. We'll guide you through the intricate dance of attracting big-name brands like Trader Joe's, while also supporting small businesses, all without raising taxes.
The podcast explores the intricate relationship between sales tax revenue and economic development in St. George, particularly focusing on the impact of a second Costco. The discussion delves into the importance of incentives for attracting business, the balancing act between supporting large corporations and local businesses, and the vital role of community engagement in shaping future city policies.
• The crucial role of sales tax in funding city services
• Insights into the site selection process for businesses
• The implications of a second Costco on the local economy
• Discussion on the but-for principle in economic incentives
• The importance of balancing support for small businesses with larger corporations
• Community engagement as a critical component of economic development
• Future growth strategies and the role of infrastructure in attracting businesses
Guest: David Cordero - Communications and Marketing Director at City of St. George, UT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dcordero1/
Guest: Chad D. Thomas -Economic Development Director at City of St George, UT
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-d-thomas-a6a43560/
Looking for a Real Estate expert? Find us here!
https://realestate435.kw.com/
www.wealth435.com
https://linktr.ee/wealth435
Below are our wonderful friends!
Find FS Coffee here:
https://fscoffeecompany.com/
Find Tuacahn Amphitheater here:
https://www.tuacahn.org/
Find Blue Form Media here:
https://www.blueformmedia.com/
#salestax #435podcast #southernutah #stgeorgeutah #costco #podcastclips #localeconomy #localdevelopment
[00:00:00] Intro.
[00:02:07] Local Economic Development in Southern Utah.
[00:13:09] Attracting Businesses for Economic Growth.
[00:26:37] Supporting Small Businesses for Economic Growth.
[00:32:09] Economic Development Incentives and Competition.
[00:44:15] Economic Development and Incentives.
[00:57:13] Economic Development in Southern Utah.
[01:08:16] City Address and Transportation Expo Teasers.
[01:15:21] Building a Strong Community Together.
Cities really live and die by sales tax. It's the cars that we've been dealt with from the state, and it is what it is, and so, then, we, as cities, have to make conscious decisions on how to pay the bills.
Speaker 2:From the Blue Form Media Studios. This is the 435 Podcast the pulse of Southern Utah. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the 435 podcast. I'm your host, robert McFarland, and we are back after a little hiatus for the holidays. We are excited to be back. We got a great lineup for you the rest of this year.
Speaker 2:Election season is not over yet. We got local elections. We have mayors across the county. We have two city council seats across the county that are going to be up for election, so we're going to follow that closely all year long as we go through it. June is when they'll start anticipating when the new candidates are going to release their names. So stay tuned more for that.
Speaker 2:But today we're going to jump right into economics. We sit down with Chad Thomas, the Economic Development Director for St George City, and David Cordero, who's the Communications and Marketing Director for St George as well, and we get into a lot of things about what is the direction of St George City and their priorities with economic development. Mainly the Costco. Yes, we got a second Costco coming into St George. It's been a big news story that people from all over the county have been clicking on and we dive into that and get the inside scoop on exactly what happened with the Costco deal and what are the incentives. What is it that brings businesses to Southern Utah? We hope you enjoy this episode. Also, make sure that you check out our sponsors and our partners in the links below in the YouTube and Spotify descriptions. We have Tech Ridge, we have Tuakon Amphitheater, we have FS Coffee Company and, of course, real Estate 435, my real estate company that sponsors this show to bring it to everybody in the Southern Utah area. We really appreciate the support from our sponsors and our partners and we want to make sure that 2025, we get this out to as many of the locals as we can. So you got a vested interest in Southern Utah. Please share the episode and enjoy this one, guys. We'll see you out there.
Speaker 2:This is the first episode of the year. We took like a month and a half break. Yeah, we're trying to. I went through, uh, an existential like what? What is the direction of the podcast? Because you have this original. The original view was okay. I'm going to give you know, local people information about local politics is the main thing. Real estate, obviously, because we're real estate agents and we want to keep people up to date with that, but there's so much that happens in real estate that's so boring to basically everybody, except for somebody who's, like, right ready to go either selling or buying a house, other real estate agents.
Speaker 3:Basically yeah, exactly yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:And so we have, like you know, portions of it real estate. But they all mix together and city government really is land use right. It's a discussion on land use. That's like the 80% of what the city is doing is going to be directing and facilitating land use policy, and so it fits into real estate quite a bit. And then to highlight local businesses and give local businesses an opportunity to kind of tell what they're doing. And so we went through the first two seasons, first two years of doing it. We did like 80, 89 episodes. We're doing one a week. Just it's a grind, it's a grind and so. But we were doing like hour and a half episodes and so many of the listeners they don't have the attention, you know, and a lot of the topics aren't long. You know there's not, if you, land use isn't really exciting yeah like some of the most interesting conversations to me are definitely not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not the most interesting to the rest of the city but we had, like I had, uh, laura mangum with the energy department on and that conversation to me was mind-blowing right, and so we could have gone for like another three hours yeah, and it was.
Speaker 2:It was so interesting and I think it's it was so valid to people that are living in southern utah to like understand, uh, energy and and utility costs and things like that. But we had like a hundred people listen to it, you know. And so it's like penetrating the market. It's like you have to create, you know, content that that reaches everybody and is interesting to everybody. But just cause you create it and it's out there.
Speaker 3:It doesn't mean people are going to engage in it or you've got to have like the right clickbait on the thumbnail and it's like, yeah, exactly, we don't really, that's not really what we want to do.
Speaker 2:And I'm not, you know, I'm not a journalist, I'm not. I don't want to craft conversations. I want to be able to have like honest conversations with people that are decision makers, to get to know them a little bit better and make them more humanized. But to shorten up episodes to like 20 and 30 minutes to where people will plug into them, it like stressed me out. I was like how could I even do that? I don't even know how I'd be able to like fit that in and convey anything of real substance to anybody.
Speaker 2:So we took a break and I decided I don't care, I'm just going to do long form episodes and we're going to talk until you know we're done talking and you know, kind of just explain out as much of topic uh, much of the interesting topics that you guys are experts in as we can, and I'll just ask questions. It's just like anybody else. I try not to over prepare for anything. So I think we're just going to have a conversation about local politics, like the local policies and economics. Where do those things intersect? Cause? So, as the economic director, st George, right? And then, david, what's your title?
Speaker 1:It's communications and marketing director communications and marketing director communications and marketing right, and I'm the economic development director economic development director.
Speaker 2:What did I say?
Speaker 1:It's economic director, but that's, that's okay.
Speaker 2:The development is a big piece, right, this is you're trying to probably more important Truthfully. Yeah, I'm not just studying the economics, it's the actually trying to get stuff vertical yeah, so, so maybe take me, take me back, and and when you did you get an economics?
Speaker 4:there's a joke in there. Is there a joke? What's the joke?
Speaker 3:I almost said it.
Speaker 4:That's what she said joke oh, is it?
Speaker 2:that? Was she then? I missed it. It was good right there. Um right, yeah, we're gonna try to stay away from my podcast.
Speaker 1:We're trying to stay away from all the students like everything because uh euphemisms, euphemism, all of it's uh we're gonna try to keep it really, really clean here you can.
Speaker 2:You can just say say how you are, man, I think. I think it's important to people to understand that you're just a human, just like everybody else, and with politics, especially local politics, you see these people in the stores, in costco, and you know Facebook, but then you go to Facebook and it doesn't feel like there's this community element to it. There's a lot of vitriol on on social media, so it's not. It's not a healthy I don't think it's a healthy place to express ideas and to kind of flush things out. So take me back, though, to the economics. What's your, what's your experience as an economic developer previous to coming to st george?
Speaker 1:yeah, because you're not from here, right? Wow, that went zero to 60 really quick you ain't from around these parts I can tell uh, no, I'm not from here. Um so, uh, for for the viewers, your viewers, I'm chad thomas. I'm the economic development director for the city of st george. I have 10 plus years in economic development experience. I've worked for multiple cities and different states, most recently coming from North Carolina, so I have that thick Southern accent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can tell, I can hear it.
Speaker 1:Right, it took me a long time to lose that.
Speaker 4:A real syrupy accent, right, syrupy.
Speaker 1:But I've worked on a lot of projects. Um, but I've I've worked on a lot of projects um, you name it, I probably touched it whether it be local, local development, uh, federal grants, uh, administration, brownfield, cdbg and cdbg. Yeah, sorry, um, we're gonna have to anytime I throw out an acronym. Yeah, yeah, I'll stop you, just stop me. So community community development block grants okay, um, a, a lot of your low-income Section 8 stuff will go through. See, this is the HUD Section 8.
Speaker 2:CDBG Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:But you know, working on a lot of projects, I mean done over a billion dollars in investment, creation of 1,000 jobs. Worked on a lot of speculative development projects that's where you build a building with no signed tenant but the developer feels strongly in the market so they're willing to risk their money and build a space. And so that's my job is really to encourage development in our community.
Speaker 2:So you did that development in under the direction of a city or you did that separately in just the private sector? Oh, great question.
Speaker 1:So economic development can look a lot of ways, or a variety of ways. Wherever you go, it can be from the public, completely public or completely private right. A lot of organizations have found this little Goldilocks middle of a public private partnership. So in North Carolina I worked for an economic development corporation, an EDO, an economic development organization or an economic development corporation. So you may hear me say EDO, edc. That's what I'm talking about. So I worked for a county-wide economic development organization that represented three communities, represented represented um three communities, and we, we had a contract with them to go out and promote their, their economic assets, and so we would just be like a chamber of commerce similar.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a chamber of commerce is a public private partnership, right, okay, it's a a. Uh, you have public money coming in and they are a non-profit, but they also have private investment as well. So, um, that makes sense. A lot of economic development organizations, they are um, a 501 C six, not a 501 C three. Uh, because they want to be able to advocate and you can't do that with a 501 C three status and that helps to helps you with your membershipbased organization. So a lot of your membership-based organizations are 501c6s. But, yeah, most people are familiar with Chamber of Commerces. That's probably the most similar.
Speaker 2:Would that be an EDO or EDC? Would that be kind of in that category?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are a lot of Chambers of Commerces or Chamber of Commerces I'm not sure how you prefer the first try.
Speaker 4:Chambers of commerce, Chambers of commerce.
Speaker 1:Yeah, chambers of commerce. I never know how to pluralize those. You know, when you have the two nouns in the middle, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you. But a lot of economic development organizations actually are housed in chambers of commerce. Okay, got it, so there's no really. I mean there's obviously illegal ways to do it, but a community can really create their economic development initiatives.
Speaker 3:however, they want.
Speaker 1:So, like my, position is completely funded by the taxpayers of the city of St George, no pressure, no pressure. But there are economic development organizations that are completely privatized as well. So it just really depends on what the community wants, and there are pros and cons to each format.
Speaker 2:And there's probably something to be said for the size of the city dictates to where, where those things intersect, right, because a smaller town doesn't necessarily have the financial ability to maybe fund a position like this. That would expand its employment rate, and then the employment I think of just residential cities, cities that have basically no economic at all. Ivins would be a great example of that. If you take out Black Desert, it's just a bedroom community, right.
Speaker 1:Just take out the most massive golf course in the county In the state. We'll take out that one big thing.
Speaker 2:Up until now, though, that was the size of that city and the economic diversity.
Speaker 3:Washington City is a pretty good example. Obviously they have some commercial, but it's like what? 95% residential?
Speaker 2:I think it's like 90% residential, something like that, and so so, depending on the growth of the city and the economic mix of the city, it's going to dictate, you know what organizations are coming in and fill some of these roles. So you know, prior to you doing this in in North Carolina, what was the size of the city, what was the kind of the, the demographics of the city, Is it similar to St George?
Speaker 1:It's about the similar size. The county was the biggest difference. And I think one thing that when we talk about growth in St George, or you know the size of St George and we can say St George as the region, when I was ina county in North Carolina, that county was very close to the city of Charlotte, okay, and and so you have this metropolitan area and the counties that support Charlotte. When you look at the, the breakup here in southern Utah, they're really we go, we get ruled very quickly here, so we are a very unique market where For a long way too.
Speaker 2:It's not only rural quickly, but it's also rural for a long way before you get to another metro.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, our two big metro areas are Las Vegas to the south and then also the Provo Orm MSA to the north, and so we really are our own market, and that presents some great opportunities and also some pretty big challenges when it comes to economic development.
Speaker 2:We're an island in the desert, yeah.
Speaker 3:Is what Rob likes to say.
Speaker 2:We are an island in the desert. We're a desert island in the desert with no water.
Speaker 4:I know you want to sing Chad.
Speaker 2:There's a song in there. There is a song, but I'm going to let it. Like I said, there's going to be a lot of you're going to throw a lot of softballs during this interview or podcast.
Speaker 3:We're the same age so I'm guessing it's probably a Weezer song Island in the sun, yeah maybe something like that Mallory, can you play that please?
Speaker 2:I'm just kidding, so take me back one more. Give me some of the economic background that you kind of look at the world through yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So the one thing in economic development is, I think, one one, one premise is you may have heard this before is a rising tide lifts all boats. So there is this. A lot of times when you look at economic development, you're trying to. The public sector is trying to encourage certain things that aren't currently happening in the private market. That's really important because, in my opinion, the one of the worst things that an economic developer can do is to incentivize water to roll downhill. If it's going to happen, why incentivize it? There's no point for the incentive right.
Speaker 1:And so when we take that with a great responsibility as economic development professionals, we're trying to see what does the community want, slash need and how can we encourage the private sector to perform that or to fulfill that. And so when we look at either you know a lot of people often look at retail services They'll say when they find out that I'm Chad Thomas, the economic development, they're like oh, I'm so excited. I've been wanting to talk to you. Here are the 10 tenants I've always wanted to bring into the city of St George Trader Joe's, number one, trader Joe's, we want a second Costco. We want, you know, we want Raising Cane's.
Speaker 3:I want Raising Cane's, raising Cane's.
Speaker 1:Okay, you name it right and that's okay. You know community wants amenities, the other thing, and those are sometimes amenities with some economic benefits, but there are also some really good, more like economic drivers, where you have not only the investment and the amenity, where a lot of retail is amenity space, but you also have those producers, like your manufacturers, that are actually producing product and then selling it outside of our market and bringing in new dollars into our economy. They have that multiplier effect. You probably have heard in economics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we talked to Gary Stone. We had Brian McCann and Gary Stone on with Intergalactic and we talked a little bit about this, about figuring out ways to bring in businesses that sell products outside of our community but bring, you know, value and revenue into the into city, whether it's through jobs and salaries and some some kind of tax benefits. But for the majority of it is to this exact. The exact thing that you're talking about is is it's not necessarily services directly to the community, but it's um wages and jobs that create all these other compounding effects on it, right?
Speaker 2:We talked about that a lot.
Speaker 1:And so when we talk about that, what is the private sector fulfilling? We often call it the but for principle. But for the incentive or the policy, this development would not happen, or the policy, this development would not happen. And so, from an economic development perspective 30,000 foot view we're looking at how can we encourage the market and produce the appropriate amount of carrot to incentivize either a company or a person to relocate, whatever it may be. What are we trying to accomplish and what's that amount? And I take the premise more of, at the local government level, I want to be the last dollar in, not the first dollar out, so we often call that the gap. So let's take a Trader Joe's, or Should we just jump into Costco? Should we just jump into Costco? If you want to jump, I was hoping that you were going to have, you know, my kirkland water bottle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I can like do some product placement here, but that's okay. But I mean it's, it's, it's a real example. I think that's top of mind for a lot of sure, a lot of st george right now, as it should be.
Speaker 1:It's a it's a huge um, so costco is a a huge benefit to our um community. A lot of people think that the Costco is actually in Washington City and it's not. It's actually in the St George City limits. They are a huge sales tax contributor to our community and they also provide a lot of resources for our small business community. It's a great point. A lot of the small business community uses their services to support their business functions, and anyone that goes there knows that they're super successful, and so we really appreciate their investment and their commitment to our community, and so we had the opportunity to be in what we call a site selection decision. We had the opportunity to be in what we call a site selection decision, and we wanted to see how we could. If the company wanted to have a second location here, we wanted to make sure that we had a seat at the table.
Speaker 2:So does that start with us reaching out to companies? Reaching out to companies Like as part of your job, like a prospecting you know, says like, hey, here's a set of you know, franchise qualified businesses that are stable, that might fit into our market. And we reach out to those companies and say, hey, we want to look for gap opportunities to be able to bring you into the community. Is that part of your role or is that something that you do?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I do a lot of business outreach, which is um. For example, I went out to las vegas last year to the national. It's the icsc recon, or I think they just call it. They dropped the recon, but it's um. I always I don't know this acronym by heart but it's like the international shopping center or something I forget.
Speaker 1:But some convention, some convention, and it's a huge International Shopping Center or something I forget. But Some convention, some convention, and it's a huge convention where all of the real estate developers, almost of the United States, come to Las Vegas and it's deal flow for two to three days straight. Wow. And if you wanna feel like a small fish in a big pond, I would highly encourage you going there, because if you think that you have the best site for a Trader Joe's or a Chick-fil-A, good luck, because you are competing with every market on this and it's really a healthy experiment to go in there. And so I went to that conference, had some meetings with some tenants, with some developers, just to say, hey, we're open, try to figure out what their performers are. Companies this may come as a surprise to some of your listeners, but companies like to make money yeah, weird. And so they know what they do and how to make money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they see the incentive and they can show you the result, right? I think Friedman Milton Friedman says that he's like show me the incentive and I'll show you the result, right, and the business is the incentive is money, and then the result is we're going to go where the money is Bingo.
Speaker 1:And so every company has criteria that they're looking for when they make a site selection decision. They know what population size is needed to support them. They know what type of incomes are needed. They know, if they do, they want to be close to other tenants, because they know that's a recipe for success. They know what traffic counts are needed. Do they need traffic? Do they need more pedestrian traffic? All these things they know, and so I know a lot of people.
Speaker 1:They'll call me and say hey, chad, I have an idea for you. What you need to do is you need to write a letter to this tenant and tell them they need to be here. I'm like, oh man, that's mind-blowing. Yeah, it's a great idea. Trust me, it's not how it works. It's hey, most of the tenants don't say thanks for the reach reaching out. Do you have a site that fits? You know all these criteria, and if you don't, then you're not. You don't have a seat at the table.
Speaker 1:If you do, hopefully, then we can start having that conversation of why we should be the best site for them, because a lot of people just think about saint george as this.
Speaker 1:They just have a small not, not, not this. I don't mean this in the pejorative sense, but just a myopic view of how, like of the economy, they think, okay, we don't have a certain tenant, therefore they should come here. But if you're talking about a national franchise, they may open up 10 stores or 15 stores this year. They're looking at every site in America to make that decision. They're trying to figure out why your site is better than the other. You know sites in America and we are lucky for even on that short list. And then we have to have that conversation of okay, how do we make sure that we turn that yellow light into a green light? And that kind of goes back to that, the Costco discussion, cause we've had a lot of interest in a lot of positive like a lot of communication from us, and David can attest to this. It's been one of our best performing uh news stories for a while.
Speaker 4:Yeah, um yeah. On the Salt Lake Tribune it was the the highest clicked story for what? Three straight days right Chad. Which story specifically.
Speaker 3:I probably got it up here.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it was the Costco articles. A couple weeks ago it was right after it went to planning commission talking about where it's going to be and how it's going to benefit the community.
Speaker 3:Proof the city is booming. A second Costco is coming to town, yeah. Written by our boy, mark Eddington.
Speaker 1:Man, I had that book mark ready to go.
Speaker 2:He's a good, yeah, I got a few tabs up here, just you know just saying I had jeff do some research on the on the costco thing is like, let's, we're gonna dive into it. So I kind of want to make sure we have some stuff handy. So so that was that was a big right. You know the community was really interested in that. What do you think they were interested about it?
Speaker 1:the well one. It's a lot of people go there, right? We know that they have a ton of membership here, and so they want to improve their experience. I think a lot of people go there and they are like it used to be easier to interact with this business. It used to be easier to get in and out. I don't want to necessarily wait in line for my $ dollar rotisserie chicken or my dollar fifty hot dog it turns into a three hundred dollar bill right every single time yeah, didn't you say that.
Speaker 2:What was the average uh ticket?
Speaker 3:it's like seventy dollars a transaction or something like that, so that that was a. I I got a fact, check it, but someone yes chat gpt that one man yeah anyway, anyway, yeah, the the, they have won the highest average tickets.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and it's, it's because of. I mean, they know what they're doing.
Speaker 2:Costco is a great company, um and you're not just going there to get one thing. Let's be honest like you're not going to go make the trek, you're not going to go through it to get one thing. You can can't just get one thing.
Speaker 1:Well, actually it's really fun. You should do this. I think it's a nice human interaction Go there for one thing and then stand in the line.
Speaker 2:that's the longest and just look at people the entire time. I just have this one thing you can go ahead, you can go ahead of me. You just got the one thing you can go ahead $150, according, 150 bucks according to perplexity.
Speaker 3:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:And what's really fun. Do this experiment, then, like I'll have either I did it one time with me holding it and then one time with my daughter holding it and give her like the puppy eye look of like do I have to? Wait in line and see how people's reactions change. Yeah, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, cool little study. So I think there's a lot of different reasons why people might have clicked on that. So, uh, one is they want to improve their experience. They seeing a second costco means, okay, I won't have to get off the green springs exit to go to get to costco. It's, it's going to be. They want to know where the location is. Is it going to be closer to them? I? I think another big part of it was the tax incentive that the city of st george um, that gap, right, the gap that you talked about to get them there. I, I know there's a big segment of, uh, the local population that thinks why, why would the city be giving them any money to have a company of that size? Come, come to it. So maybe help me understand that gap. Well, one of the city council votes too was oh, yeah, yeah that was her argument as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, michelle Tanner, she voted opposed to it specifically under the auspice of you know, we're giving a billion dollar company incentives to come here, but are we doing enough for the local mom and pops? I think it was something along her statement. I think you nailed it. Yeah, and so you know, looking at that as a perspective, obviously there the city council has to weigh all of the pros and cons. Your job is to just get seats at the table right. I mean, you got hired for a specific purpose and that was to bring businesses here. So in the, in the conversation with the gap, like maybe, maybe help me understanding. Like, what does that? What does that look like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think David can help me talk about this. But one thing that's really important before we go into the actual details of that incentive, which is how does the city pay for the services that we provide? And without understanding that conversation, it's really hard to understand economic development, because, whether you like it or not, we have a commitment to our constituents to pay the bills Right and we are limited in our funding mechanisms.
Speaker 2:Pay the bills and provide the services like the expected services.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, right, because, like I mean, I would love a sponsorship from Oakley.
Speaker 4:Just saying, you know.
Speaker 1:Oakley just put it out there, yeah I do have a um stanley stanley product product placement yeah, you know you're behind the times, man.
Speaker 3:It's all about the hydro jugs now, apparently.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, maybe that's why I got a screaming deal on this supply and demand supply and demand.
Speaker 1:But, um, like, we don't have our city halls sponsored by a big corporation, right? So we have very limited funding mechanisms. So we have property tax, we have permits, we have fees and then we have sales tax, and the last time the city of St George raised their property taxes was when you were born. Now, think about that, and that's when I was born, 1987. 1987 was the last time the city of St George raised their property tax, which is an awesome campaign thing to be able to say like, hey, we don't raise your taxes until you need to raise the property taxes.
Speaker 3:Yeah right right but so the argument there is like well, instead of just kicking the can down the road, maybe it, maybe it should have just been done incrementally, but at the same time, there there wasn't a whole lot of growth either, right, so there probably was right, there wasn't that need, right there?
Speaker 2:wasn't a need and so and I think it's, it's that, I think it's a big role within the city government to figure out ways to not need it. Right, how do we, how do we grow and not also have to collect more in the taxes, right? And so you know, kind of going back to the very beginning of the conversation is you know it's, you know the incentive to what can we make? Incentive to what can we make you know second and third order consequences of these economic development decisions that we make that can impact the community on a magnitude that would keep us from having to raise taxes Right?
Speaker 1:And so where I was going with that is, sales tax is huge for cities in Utah. Yeah, cities really live and die by sales tax. It's the cars that we've been dealt with from the state and it is what it is. And so then we as cities have to make conscious decisions on how to pay the bills Right, and we don't do that lightly. And so when we look at a potential economic development incentive, we're looking at, okay, what's the highest and best use of our taxpayer dollars to help generate economic growth while still supporting the most people possible? And looking at it, we did a really good analysis at the city of looking at what a second location could do, and let's just be clear that second location could do. And let's let's just be clear that second location you know it's not a done deal until we get a certificate of occupancy right, um, so there's still a lot of moving parts and pieces to that, but and for people that that maybe missed the article.
Speaker 2:So where is the location? It's in desert color.
Speaker 3:I was gonna say it's not 100% finalized yet, but the Tribune article says it's in desert. It's 4700 South Desert Color Parkway is what the Tribune says.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so it'll be out in desert color, but until there's a certificate of occupancy, until the signature has been made it can move.
Speaker 1:I mean, a deal's not done until it's done.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we don't like to count our chickens, it can move. I mean, a deal's not done until it's done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we don't like to count our chickens Right, you know, but you got to have the preliminary conversation ahead of time, exactly, and the train is moving.
Speaker 1:Right, and one thing is that a lot of I think, if you are looking at the incident, it's okay. Well, what are we doing for small businesses? And I think that's really something that we pride ourselves at the City of St George, where we really do feel that we have a great story for our small business community One you look at the investment that we've done in downtown St George. We have spent a significant amount of dollars to really reinvest and revitalize downtown St George and I remember um coming down to visit, before I lived here, um, when towns, town square was just a new thing and it really was the reason to come to, for families to come to St George. In my opinion, um, we do that. I mean the city itself. We also are making a? Um, a significant investment in our city hall to really put our stake in the ground, to say that we are committed to downtown and the downtown business community. We want that when someone has a transaction at the city, we want the businesses around there to, you know, to feel that impact. See that extra traffic, see that extra traffic.
Speaker 1:So we also are one of the premier sponsors at the St George area chamber of commerce, which their whole mission is to support small businesses Local and small businesses, local and small and so we work really heavily with our small business community and our advocates, our partners, to really promote and help them.
Speaker 1:But when you look at, as I mentioned, costco and what they do, a lot of our small business community uses them as a supplier and those benefits, and so we looked at all the pros and cons and we felt that it was a great use of that carrot, right? Try to figure out what the gap was. And once again, it's the opportunity to be at the table, costco or any company they're looking at. We often say in economic development, when you meet with a company, you're giving the company reasons to say no to you and you're trying to not give them a reason to say no to you, right, as much as possible. Because when they're looking at all these sites they're like all right, this guy said this, this site doesn't have that and you really want to be on that short list.
Speaker 2:Well, what would and maybe, Dave, you can jump in on this when we think about, okay, the opportunity to get them at the table, does it not make sense that those businesses, in some timeline or another, would make this decision ultimately on their own anyway, right? Or are we maybe and this is just the counter argument of saying, do we really need to incentivize them? Or is it a time thing that eventually someone will come into the market, cause it might not be Costco, but it might be Sam's club, or it might be another large, you know retail wholesaler type type company? Do you feel like, um, you know is. Is there some something to be said for pacing ourself rather than pushing that economic development growth?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I like to jump in there. So let's say we took that approach and say, well, you know, give it, give it eight to 10 years, they'll be here anyway. Well, if they're ready to move now and if we're not, if we're not providing that opportunity for incentives, maybe they go to a neighboring city like Washington and so, and then we'll never I say never, but probably never have that opportunity again, right, and so we lose out on that, that sales tax revenue.
Speaker 2:Was that? Was that in consideration? Was there what is there, a competitive market that you're aware of? That was was happening. Where they could, they could be going to Washington Is there? Is there, you know, intercity competition in these businesses?
Speaker 1:know intercity competition in these businesses. Yeah, um, so there are. So when we talk about going back to the kind of foundation of economic development, when we talk about what we look at for to give an economic development incentive one, we need to establish the but for. And part of that is does it increase jobs and investment and is the project competitive? Because I mean you do real estate. If you knew a hundred percent that someone was going to sign a deal with you, would you offer them an incentive or a price reduction? Yeah, probably not, for sure not, because that's you're losing money. Like if you knew a hundred percent, if you had a hundred, if there was 99.9% chance, would you offer incentive. And you're like then it starts changing right, because you're like I don't know now. And so the more ambiguity you have on your side and for us, we knew that they were evaluating multiple sites in Washington County.
Speaker 1:And what's really important when we talk about sales tax that a lot of people don't realize is we get paid off of a very unique distribution model when it comes to sales tax, and a large portion of that is the point of sale, which means wherever that transaction happened, the jurisdiction, they get half of that, 1%, okay, it's guaranteed. The other half is based upon a calculation. So where that site is matters, and so I kind of put this into perspective. So a lot of people talk about the current Costco, right, because everyone drives on that exit. They know the pain. So right now a lot of the infrastructure demand for Costco is burdened by, or Washington City bears a burden of, a lot of that traffic.
Speaker 1:But who gets 100% of that? 0.5% sales tax? St George, st George. And so when we start looking at all these factors and it's a lot of factors to look at it's how we want to put St George first. That's our number one priority, right. And so as we we go through the deal and we are looking at that, but four, we're looking at the gap. Because if we knew for a hundred percent that they were going to come, we I mean that's, but it once we know it's competitive and we ask those questions and we do our due diligence. We, we talk to our people, we talk to other, you know, is it?
Speaker 2:kind know, is it kind of like? Is it kind of like a you don't know? You don't know what the other parties are are giving as far as incentives go, or is it kind of out, all in it Is it? Is it a silent auction, or is it like hey, here's, here are all the?
Speaker 4:cards on the table.
Speaker 2:Cause, like in real estate. I'll take this down to the. I take the perspective when, especially when there's multiple offers, there's multiple people that want to buy a house, there's the way of saying, okay, I'm going to give my highest and best offer. I'm going to go to everybody and say you just give me your best offer. And then I'm going to pick one of those, versus saying, okay, well, I'm going to take this offer over here and I'm going to tell this person hey, they're offering us this, are you willing to match that? For the seller, I, but for the seller, I feel like 99% of the time, if all the cards are out on the table, the buyers are going to compete against each other because they know what number they're trying to hit. Is that kind of the way it works, or does it not really work that way?
Speaker 1:It's very similar. I think I love the residential now in comparison, because in economic development you play stupid games. You get stupid results. Yeah, I mean, it's true, and so and a lot of companies. I mean you're dealing with multi-million dollar corporations, billion dollar companies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and this now talking just economic development, not specifically to Costco yeah, it's, they are going through a process, time is money to them and they're trying to make a site selection decision quickly. Mm-hmm, time is money to them and they're trying to make a site selection decision quickly. So, and as I, I tell people, um, when I work with them, with the communities, is we need to give our highest and best because, um, they, because you, as you know, if you give an offer and they don't accept, you may lose that. You don't need to come back and be like, oh, you know, just kidding, I could do more, I could do more. And you're like, look, I don't have to come back and be like, oh, you know, just kidding, I could do more, I could do more. And you're like, look, I don't have time.
Speaker 3:The way that I look at it, too, kind of going back to a residential real estate perspective is what are you willing to walk away from, right? So, like, whatever the tax incentive is, if there's a higher number than that and they say, no, we got to walk away, we can't you know, we just figure out what that walk away number is and right.
Speaker 1:And so one of the phrases I often use is my job as an economic developer is to sell the harvest, not give away the farm, and so we're not just throwing away money. First of all, and second, we're not going to do a deal that doesn't benefit our city. And number three and this is really important with the incentives is most incentives are structured in a way to where you're looking at the new growth and paying for the new growth, or you're paying the incentive via the new growth. We're not writing a blank check today and saying, hey, here's this money. We're saying, okay, because you're increasing the tax base or because you're doing whatever. We can justify foregoing this tax or foregoing some, some things, and that's what we have to perform.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you go through, you know some of the Facebook comments on, you know the St George news articles and stuff. And a lot of people are like why are we giving money, tax dollars, to Costco? But it's a zero sum game as far as like upfront cost, we're not. It's not money out of the budget, it's a zero budget impact, right?
Speaker 2:I think, I think I think you're right and I think one of the things that I would my follow-up to Michelle Tanner which I haven't had the conversation which I should just call her and ask her about it, but you know her point being is that if we're not willing to give incentives to the mom and pops but we are willing to give incentives to this billion dollar company, that's, that's antithetical to the value of the community. What the local government should be doing to provide for those local businesses. And I feel like there's a missing gap where mom and pop businesses, historically they don't they. There's not this execution piece right, it's like being able to. Once they're established, can we count on them to be open, right, and can we account on them to have this revenue and be able to project it out over time?
Speaker 2:Where, when you make those higher risk gambles on small and local businesses, that tax incentive is a lot riskier and a lot less not as good of a steward of that money, when we're taking into all these factors, is that, yeah, it's a lot of money on the line, but also, is the business one that we can rely on as saying, is this a high risk business or a low risk business. Do they have that track record? Do they have the track record? And a lot of the mom and pop stores, although they might have great ideas? Did they do the analysis on? Do we have enough traffic right? How many businesses have started and failed in the last 12?
Speaker 3:months in saint george, like we've. We've all seen them open and close, open and close. There's nothing worse than going to lunch at some you know a great little restaurant. You show up and they're like they have a sign on the thing that says, yeah, we're closed for a wedding or something, and it's like I came for lunch I wanted to give you.
Speaker 2:Or, and then they just fold up shop and they're like oh well, you know it ends up, it's too expensive, we can't. We can't make it work.
Speaker 1:But if they brought, if they were getting some incentive from the city to be able to open that business that's sunk cost that we don't get back Right, and so there's a lot of weight there and I want that's why we are so concerned about how we evaluate projects because we want to be able to communicate to our residents that we are doing what's best for St George, and so one I think all of our we appreciate all the feedback from our council members on this, because it was very helpful for us to know where we're at and it does I mean it demonstrates the need for that but-for test, but-for the incentive would this happen? And so, once again, I want to make sure it's clear that we appreciate all of our council members' input on this and we're not necessarily saying one way is the right or the wrong way. What we are doing is trying to put deals in front of our council and encourage development in saint george, to really reposition saint george. I mean saint george is the southern utah's number one economy it's the hub of washington.
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's probably it's probably one of the top three to five economies in all of the state of utah. I mean we we had uh uh kyle paisley on the podcast just the last episode that we did and we talked a lot about the development, economic development um value of southern utah. It's like, I think, as a whole, from from all of the, the school and institutional trust lands, uh incomes. Washington County uh uh accounted for 40% of all the income that SITLA land brought in from an economic development. Washington County counted for 40% of it across the entire entirety of the state. That's a huge economic development driver for the state. So it's not just St George is the city within Washington County, it's. St George is a city within the state of Utah too, and I think a lot of people think, oh, it's a small town, we're, we're a big city in in reference to what it is that we actually have to accomplish on a day-to-day basis because of that Metro conversation we were just talking about.
Speaker 1:Right and so for us to be able to maintain that status as Southern Utah's number one economy. We at the city don't take that mantle very lightly at all and so when we're looking at motivating, encouraging companies to be here and we don't want to incentivize everything, like I said, we want to be the last dollar in but when we were trying to maintain our status and keep our taxes low and provide the best service that we feel we are A cool data point, and this is from October 2024. This is the last report out from the state of total taxable sales from St George City. So in October 2024 is $367 million just under $368 million in total taxable sales in the state of St George, which is a 7% growth year over year. That's great. The closest city in Washington County is Washington City at 75 million, wow. So that shows you the big disparity and you can pretty much add up the entire rest of the county and we're about 50% or over 50% of the entire taxable sales of the entire county.
Speaker 2:So it's. You have. Basically I'm drawing a blank on that. I was trying to do a run, a racing analogy. We're in a race but we're like lapping by a long shot all these other cities. So I have to. I have to take the, the uh antithet, or the uh. The opposite side of this is we want to carry this mantle as being the number one economic, but for the greater community of Washington County, could it have been a better value to have Costco go to Washington? Because it would balance out the needs? Because if the county is so reliant on St George as this economic driver, wouldn't a dispersed economy throughout the cities be beneficial to the community asa whole? Because we rely on Washington and they rely on us and there's some balance there. I mean, I know your job isn't to take that into account, so maybe this is more of a David question Because I know what your job is Never never, but you have a mandate.
Speaker 2:Your job is to keep that role. But looking at it, the city as a whole, you know, could it be said that maybe we spread the wealth out a little bit to help some of these other cities?
Speaker 3:Because I look at your question is also assuming that Washington City had a site similar to the one that St George did, and a good enough incentive to be able to bring it in Right. So assuming those things are true then maybe that's a good argument to have.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean that's a great question, obviously from a city point. We operate our budget. We don't operate anybody else's budget, so we want to make sure that we're getting the revenue to be able to execute that and provide those services From an individual resident or customer status. Would it be great to spread out some things? Yeah, it'd be great to avoid the traffic. But these businesses I've heard Chad say this time and time and again businesses, they don't want to be outside of the hub, they want to be where the action is Right and um, so that's that's kind of par for the course, and and and that's why we get these, um, you know these businesses grouping together Exit 10, you know there's all those businesses there. Do they want to spread out farther with? You know, farther away? No, because they're going to get less traffic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I also think in your analogy or the way you presented that idea, the county still gets the benefit. So people are going to shop where they're going to shop. The question is, who gets the sales tax right? So the service still happens. And we see this oftentimes with industrial projects where, um, the, the manufacturer will come in and the whole community benefits because people don't just live in the city. That provided the incentive right.
Speaker 1:And I think I think also this is really clear because it is some competition between cities. But it's also friendly competition and I love when Washington City wins a project. It's huge for us, it's great because St George can't fulfill all the demands for this region and at the same time, of course, I want to put St George Forge because that's who I work for. So it's a little bit of both.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of times when we talk about economic development we take it from a scarcity mindset, and you guys in real estate probably have seen this, where the agents that have the scarcity mindset they either they burn out really quickly or they're terrible to work with because there's they never want to share, they don't want to help each other out. Yeah, but the ones that are. Take the abundant mentality of saying you know what, there's enough for all of us. If we work together, we can probably find the best. Um, we you know we can probably win together, and that's something that we're actually working here at the County. Um, we have an initiative to really rebrand and repurpose the Southern Utah Economic Alliance, where you have all of our cities coming together and saying you know what we actually want to compete for economic development projects together from a regional presence, which is huge.
Speaker 2:I think that's hugely important and this is where I want to head next. I think it's a good transition point, but I want to. I gave you a transition.
Speaker 1:This is perfect transaction sponsored by um, yeah, yeah there's two, a con amphitheater, one of our partners.
Speaker 2:Um so, but I I do want to go back to okay, let's, let's put uh dollars to the incentive. What is the tax revenue that's expected to come from this costco on an annual basis, from that 100 of the 50, you know 50 basis points or 50 of the tax percentage, what? What's the revenue annual that that saint george can? Yeah, so we can weigh those two side by side.
Speaker 1:Great question. So the easy answer and I'll give you a better answer. But the easy answer is I can't talk about sales tax data from um people. Um, okay, legally okay. So we can go to the next question. But I will give you something, because this is a podcast yeah, yeah, yeah, give me something, man.
Speaker 2:In other words, you can't specifically say costco does this, yeah, so part, part of because I had, I had, uh, the mayor, mayor santa clara told me that the the harmans accounts for about a million dollars in in sales tax revenue to santa clara. Like just that one, their their entirety of collecting of all their taxes, huge, just harmans doubled right their entire collection in tax and that shows the the, the power of sales tax in your community, right, um?
Speaker 1:so we're not legally allowed to say, okay, we because we get.
Speaker 2:This is exactly what we get.
Speaker 1:We get the costco, or we get the um, you know the chad thomas warehouse, and they generate X amount and so we can wait. I can say that they are a significant contributor to our economy and you can take that for what that's worth. And we look at what they're bringing in and the incentive agreement and do we make ourselves whole and how fast do we make ourselves whole?
Speaker 2:Did the city council get that number? Yes, okay, so they get that number, so they're operating on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't say oh, just trust us, just trust us, okay, I'm not the music man, right.
Speaker 4:You should buy these cool but they should right. Yeah, they should.
Speaker 2:But yeah, we don't insist on that of course that, of course, exactly.
Speaker 1:We give data. Yeah, so they got the data, okay, yeah, so we, we give people data and we look at it, and we had our finance team look at it, um, our budget team and to make sure, are we doing this. And back to what david pointed point out, which is a great point, the the company also has commitments to fulfill within the agreement, and so that is another very important part. When it comes to incentives, uh, because we just don't write a?
Speaker 2:check how many jobs, how many jobs can you give me? How many jobs it'll I?
Speaker 3:can 250 to 300, I think was the right.
Speaker 1:So a typical costco and you can google this.
Speaker 2:It's a typical costco will generate about 250 to 300 jobs so let's let's call their their average salary around 40 grand, maybe 45 grand it's, it's a little higher than that and say it's probably more it'll be more, more than that. It's north of 60.
Speaker 4:It's north of 60 because you, you see people I see at this costco all the time, people I've seen employees, they've been there 10, 15 years.
Speaker 2:That you just you see them all the time, you get to know them and so that's a, it's a, it's a quality place for uh to have that longevity and that 60 I think is higher than the the median income of the individual jobs in the county right, because I think I think last time was like 56 000 or something like that was.
Speaker 1:It's pretty close, um so, their family's sustaining wages. And since you brought up that point and I think this is an important component to because it's 3.8 million was the was the incentive to bring costco here so that's a typo it's 3.18 that's okay, 3.18. 700 grand.
Speaker 2:I could do a lot with 700 grand. I'll take 700 grand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you know pennies. We don't like to make a million dollar mistakes at the city, so it's 3.1.
Speaker 1:But regardless, it is an incentive for that total and we looked at it. We make ourselves whole. One of the cool things about a deal like Costco and this is why I call it one of the like. It's a very unique project. We're not going to just dangle a carrot for and we didn't dangle a carrot necessarily. We are looking at all opportunities. But you look at the, so you already know that commercial pays the bills. Residential supports the commercial, so this is a commercial use. It creates jobs and quite a significant amount of jobs, and then also it gives a sales tax. So that's like the holy trinity in economic development.
Speaker 2:For me, right, it's like we get a commercial property, we get to tax it at 100 yeah, every time you see a master plan community with all houses, houses set on the agenda, you're like, oh my gosh, another one commercial. Can we get some commercial developments in there?
Speaker 1:um, but that's what, that's how I look at things, right, and it's a unique lens, but it's it really cool. And that's where, once again, where we look at it and we say, okay, does this make sense for the city? And let the data be the data, and if it makes sense, yeah, great. If not, and I think, maybe just to preemptively answer another question, which is would we do this for anybody? And I think, think you know, like, let's have a conversation. Um, if someone has a project that they want to do in the city, we're always open to having that conversation.
Speaker 1:I do think what's important is, um, we will ask the question how much are you generating for the city? Like, what does the city get out of it? Right, and sometimes, unfortunately, that number is really small, right, right, and it just is what it is and that's that's fine. I mean, you do this on the residential side, yeah, like, hey, and sometimes your most neediest customers are the ones that are buying the their first time house. Yep, or you know that that 50 150 000 condo took. You made like a couple grand on it. Yeah, which doesn't exist in saint george but but we spend the most time on
Speaker 1:yeah, it's absolutely true, and 100 and it's kind of the same thing for us and um, it's just a unique thing to do so let's, let's transition to the um, county-wide kind of economic development uh project.
Speaker 2:What was the name of it?
Speaker 1:again, I, I'm sorry, that's okay, it's so fresh. It's Southern Utah Economic Alliance Economic Alliance. So.
Speaker 2:Utah, so Utah, hashtag, hashtag so Utah, that's so Utah. But, this is an iteration of something that we've done a couple of different times in a couple of different periods, right? So this is kind of a reboot of over the decades. I mean, if you go even back into the 90s, once I-15 went through St George, we got Red Cliffs. You know the golf course at Red Cliffs, you know we started having these economic development type organizations. So what sets this one differently, apart from what we've done in the past?
Speaker 1:Sure, I think one. It's defining what is Southern Utah. Okay, If you so, I'm new from here, I ain't from these these parts.
Speaker 2:You're not around the. You're from around the. I'm not from around here either. Right, You're in good company. Okay, great, Safe space.
Speaker 1:What is Southern Utah? Yeah, and it's very interesting to me that everybody has a different answer to that, depending on where you're from, what part of the state you're at. And so for me, as an economic developer, I am trying to promote my community to as many people as possible as the best place to do business, and so when they ask, okay, where is St George? I say Southern Utah. What does that mean From a marketing perspective? That's a huge gap that we have not filled.
Speaker 1:We also have some confusion because we have, you know, we have a university which I actually went to, southern Utah, name drop Southern Utah University. You know, one of the best universities ever, name drop Southern Utah University, one of the best universities ever. They're in Cedar Iron County and yet our alliance, which is Southern Utah Economic Alliance, right now only represents Washington County and it's like well, why isn't the Southern Utah University a part of this cool organization? So when I got here about two years ago, I just started asking questions and from uh, I'm, I'm more of a marketer and that's why, dave, I brought David, cause we love. You know, we can talk about some marketing stuff later. Um, especially for the city, it's how do I promote this area and the state is out there promoting Utah as the best, and you've seen a lot of their promotional campaigns be almost too successful. Whether it's to be the 95, great marketing campaign, right, almost too successful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a lot of people said it was too successful. They had to pull the plug on that Right.
Speaker 1:I mean, isn't that like the marketer's dream is? Hey, you did such a great job. Can you stop talking? Can you stop?
Speaker 4:doing that. I think Instagram had a lot to do with it too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean just the body of how they rolled that out. It was perfectly timed and then also a great message.
Speaker 1:Right, easily to digest from the consumer. So the state's out there beating the drum that Utah is the best place to do business, and I'm trying to figure out how do I plug into that. And I'm trying to figure out how do I plug into that. Well, I'm Southern Utah. Well, what does that mean? And so one, it's really establishing what Southern Utah is. Who is it? Who are the entities, what's the brand? What assets do we have?
Speaker 1:One interesting thing when we talk about economic development is here in Washington County, we actually lack an important component of infrastructure in the county, which is rail. We don't have any rail and which is pretty important and especially for a lot of manufacturing projects, and so we, um, but we do have it in Iron County. So together, um, we're actually stronger. And a project in Iron County really doesn't compete with Washington County, right, and a project in Iron County really doesn't compete with Washington County, right, big surprise there. Or Beaver, right. And so we're actually stronger together than we are apart.
Speaker 1:And I think, as you actually get to understand real estate transactions, it's location, location, location. The site drives. I mean you can offer incentives, drives. I mean you can offer incentives, incentives may, as David was mentioning, help someone get to a yes faster, but if it's a bad deal they're not taking it. No one, like you said, businesses, they like money. That's their prime motivator. So for us, their prime motivator. So for us, if, if I can help a project come to a beaver county, huge win for me, not only because my family's a lot of my family live in beaver county, so that would be great when I go to family reunions. It's a. It's great for us because if, let's say, a manufacturer wants to go to iron county because they need rail, their executive team probably is coming to saint george from a residential standpoint. And where are they golfing? Where are they shopping? At our two cascos yeah, you know like.
Speaker 1:Those are the things that we think about, so it's a huge win.
Speaker 2:It's rising tide, lifts all boats I think that's a really, a really good perspective. It's it's something that it's funny because a few years ago, when I was looking at, I was like okay, what is it that we're missing out on if, from a sustainability perspective, infrastructure wise, what are we missing? And that rail stuck out. My mind is like how do we never get a railroad down here?
Speaker 3:now, geographically is the is the main main answer to that the topography, the topography right and and there wasn't.
Speaker 2:there wasn't a huge mining uh you know organization here in in saint george, it happened all in Cedar City. And so the incentive and the result was railways in Iron County and Beaver with saying, okay, well, we don't have a suburban or urban outlying community to help support us. Because even if we just go out an hour, you think of you know the Provo metro area, you know you could drive an hour one way or the other and you're getting support from that population density as it grows. But we've never, we've never been able to expand that out anywhere north of here. And so being able to take that economic alliance and put it together and say, hey, we're going to try to, we got the three of us growing together, what is going to support all of us? Because it helps with housing, it helps with all these other factors. So I think that's an important differentiator.
Speaker 1:Yep, so we're really excited to roll that out. That announcement was made at what's Up Down South. Um, the state is looking at helping um get that off the ground as well. Um, and once again, we, we are stronger, stronger together. And that's really the message that I've learned in economic development. Um, you, you can take that scarcity mindset of I want, I want all the deal flow myself. I'm not going to work with anybody and um, I just have not seen the results from that type of mentality.
Speaker 3:Scarcity mindset also leads to desperation. You know.
Speaker 2:So what other maybe? Um, and this would be kind of my last question is we think and then we can, we can cover if there's something that you wanted to kind of talk about specifically. But what other um sectors of the economy? So, obviously, costco we we spent a lot of time on that as, like the retail side what are these other focuses, other focuses, areas, have you, as a, as the city's gone, and try to attract, attract different types of businesses? What have you guys been looking at? Obviously, tech, tech. We have tech Ridge and we have technology. But maybe help me navigate that a little bit.
Speaker 1:And not to gloss over that. So the city of St George was actually ranked the number two best performing city and the entire state, or sorry, entire nation by the Milken Institute, which is not a clickbait article, it's right.
Speaker 3:It's a legit organization.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's a huge win for the city of St George, and one of the cool factors of why the ranking was there was because of our we had the highest GDP group GDP growth in the tech sector 96.8.
Speaker 4:Whoa Wow Fact check that.
Speaker 2:When we start with such a small number, it's really easy to jump. Maybe, Maybe that's the perspective. It's like we're at so small but we're making massive jumps when you go from one to three.
Speaker 3:it's a huge percentage.
Speaker 1:It's like when I do a weight loss challenge with my dad. It's like come on, why are we going off percentage?
Speaker 2:No, but the reality is still there. So we're seeing movement on the technology side for sure.
Speaker 1:Right, but I know a lot of people have heard about Tech Ridge and they're like we're really excited to see things start moving on. But development is a process. It's a long-term game. If you're looking for short-term gains, development is not your field. No, yeah, absolutely no. You know, go, and that's one of the reasons why I like sugar, so you know so. So so free flowing here in utah.
Speaker 2:It's a short-term gain you can get that high really quickly, yeah, right away.
Speaker 1:but if you want, if you want some like long-term um opportunities, development's really cool. So tech ridge the old airport site the city owns and is working with a developer on that that is going to create product or available space for tech companies. That's huge because if we do have tech companies expanding, we they need a space Right. So that's one that we've been working very heavily on and I know people are like what's next? What's next? But that's a big project that has the potential to be our largest economic development project ever. Another project that we love working with and they are the backbone, the bread and butter in St George's, the Fort Pierce Industrial Park.
Speaker 1:A lot of people gloss over that and say, oh, it's just industrial buildings. That is so important for our economy. So our partnership out there with the developer out there is so important and we have a lot of good tenants out there, a lot of good businesses providing family sustaining wages it's really important and they still have 400 plus acres. Good tenants out there, a lot of good businesses providing family-sustaining wages it's really important and they still have 400-plus acres to develop out there. Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 3:Well, it's huge because industrial space is nonexistent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, outside of the Fort Pierce Industrial Park I mean in the county there's not a lot of already zoned ready-to-go area to do that development.
Speaker 1:The vacancy rate for Class a industrial product in the the region zero percent it's pretty, it's.
Speaker 1:It's less than one percent, yeah, zero percent yeah um, so that's, that's like that's almost unhealthy, right, yeah, um, but we, we are doing everything we can to promote that as well. Um, another one is an infrastructure project which is gonna just take us to a. I feel like there's a pun in here, but it's the airport and a whole. Just take us to a. I feel like there's a pun in here, but it's the airport and a whole new take us to new heights.
Speaker 2:Um, but you?
Speaker 1:I don't know if you paid attention to the news yesterday, but the governor's office signed um an agreement with beta technologies to talk about air taxi and EV tall um electrification of air, you know, airplanes or air traffic is is huge, and the city of st george has committed and invested significant dollars to our airport and we don't take that lightly either. And so we, um our, our airport director is doing a great job out there. Our governor affairs director has really worked well with the state and our we, we really appreciate the state's partnership in helping us get some funding for an air traffic control tower, um but and and some other things. So we, you know hashtag thanks, state you know, give them, give them some credit.
Speaker 2:I mean it's so. It's so important because if we do take the perspectives, I'm going to look 10, 20 years down the road. What is the world going to look like? And this Evadol and this air taxi type industry is going to explode. And so when we think of being an island in the desert, getting from place to place and having it be through the air, having our own control of our own air traffic control tower, is hugely beneficial, and so any investment into that airport is going to be the right moves for the future. Down the road. It's not going to be tomorrow, it's not going to be even five, ten years, it's probably going to be a little bit further out. But being able to put that foundational stuff in in advance is really important.
Speaker 4:I think, yeah. We just celebrated records that we broke at the airport. We had over 346,000 people went through the airport this last year and we had our biggest October ever, which is actually our biggest month period that we've ever had, since we had the airport at the new location and, of course, when it was at the old location it wasn't anywhere near. You know the the traffic.
Speaker 2:Anybody flew on those landing on the plateau wasn't easy.
Speaker 4:Right, and if you did, you're an OG. Yeah, it's been a while. It's been a while, and so we had 39,000 in October and and in November and December we also set records for those respective months, and so the airport is gaining in popularity. And, as Chad mentioned, we have the tower, and then we're also looking to expand the terminal, which gives us the capacity to be able to add more direct flights, because that's what people ask all the time when are we getting more direct flights?
Speaker 4:Well we need to build it and to take a line from Field of Dreams if you build it, they will come yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, and that in turn lowers the ticket price.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely, which is what we all want, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Give them more options to go to different places too. Yeah, you don't have to go to Vegas. Yeah, exactly Okay. What else should we know about what? Haven't we any headline news pieces that we can cause? We got what? Uh, the state of the city address is coming up in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, state of the city is coming up February 11th. It's going to be at the Dixie center, 3 PM. It's also coinciding with the Dixie regional transportation expo, which is all day at the Dixie center, just down the hall from the garden room and from the garden room, and it's a great opportunity to learn more about your city, about the transportation plans that are going on. It's all free and, those of you who have been in the past, there's a lot of information there, and one thing that I've been working with Chad on this is how do we get all that information, how do we get it a little bit more easily consumable? And so you may notice, in the state of the city we're going to have more videos that not only will show during the presentation, and I don't want to give away too much of the content here. Right, I want people to come and see it.
Speaker 1:We'll tease it, though, we'll tease it.
Speaker 4:But we also, for those who can't make it or who can't watch it live, we'll have those available to share on social media, on our website, because we just we have so many great things going on and we're just, we're so excited to tell everybody about it, not only what we accomplished in 2024, but what we've got going this year and in the in the years to come.
Speaker 2:Some exciting announcements. Like last year, there's going to be some exciting announcements maybe.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I mean, we have the worst kept secret right now. Oh all right, Well, I can't wait, it's Costco.
Speaker 2:It's the worst kept secret. What were you guys talking about?
Speaker 3:I was going to say for the people that are on social media complaining about the traffic in St George, come on down to the expo. Yeah, the expo.
Speaker 1:And come on down to the expo. Yeah, the expo, and you know, light up whoever you need to have conversations with.
Speaker 4:I, I agree with about 90 of what you just said.
Speaker 1:Well, here come to the expo I don't know about lighting people up.
Speaker 2:He's like I just. I just worked the booth. I'm sorry, I heard on the 435 podcast. I'm supposed to light you up I'm from the south.
Speaker 1:That means a completely different thing, yeah it probably does.
Speaker 3:But I think, I think, think having an in-person conversation with somebody instead of just typing something out I mean, if you can talk to the transportation director or whomever it's probably going to be a little bit different of a conversation than I. Hate traffic in St George.
Speaker 4:It's the worst, oh, it's big and you can see our 20-year plans, 30-year plans, and when I say our, I mean for the entire region. It's not just the city of St George at this transportation expo, it's all of our municipalities, our county partners, state state partners that are there. Tons of information and, um, you know, there's a, there is a plan, and people always ask well, what's the plan? What's the plan? Well, come to the transportation expo. You'll see the plan and we'll have experts there that can explain it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think other thing for the state of the city is, you know, and um is our, our, our theme is our, our commitment to you and as a, we are really working on at the city of trying to improve our, what we call. I mean in the private sector, you talk about user experience, so for us, it'd be the resident experience. What, how do you interact with local government and how are we being accountable to that? Um, we, we know full and well. You don't have to remind us that we're the monopoly in a monopoly, that you have no other choice. We hear that loud and clear. Um, my family constantly reminds me of that every Sunday dinner. So it's totally cool.
Speaker 1:But, joking aside, we really want to make sure that we are transparent and accountable to our constituents. We're redoing the way or I guess we're improving the way we're doing the budget process this year to really attach budgetary items to goals and objectives, which is going to be huge. That's cool. We're rolling out Qualtrics into our website. So when you contact the city, we're going to be able to track how we're receiving information, how we're closing tickets. So when you contact the city, you're like hey, my trash wasn't picked up. Closing tickets. So when you contact the city you're like, hey, my trash wasn't picked up at. From the city's perspective, we want to know that we fulfilled that request. So if we open the door, we want to close that door as quickly as possible.
Speaker 1:Shout out ryan smith qualtrics, yeah, sponsored by sponsored by the utah hockey club and byu basketball um so we have that and what you'll see and we're we're most likely going to be rolling this out in mid-february um, we'll make that. We'll make that transition. And then also, when you're on the website, if you're you can't find what you need, you're rage clicking. You know you keep clicking the button, like that rage clicking.
Speaker 1:you're like you just get so upset. There's going to be an intercept on our website from Qualtrics that says hey, can I help you? Yeah, and you can be like man, I cannot find Chad's email. I want to send him a nasty gram It'll. You can say that now and it'll go into the system and we'll respond.
Speaker 3:So, contrary to probably what a lot of again going back to social media you're not trying to sabotage traffic and business. You're not trying to kill us all.
Speaker 2:I had a guy in Ivan City Council stand up during the SITLA presentation. So SITLA has a mandate to do whatever they want. They don't have to answer the city. They go through the process out of respect for the process. But this guy stands up and he's like you're trying to kill us all.
Speaker 4:A councilman? No, he's a guy in the crowd, a resident in the crowd in the middle of the presentation.
Speaker 2:He just stands up and he screams at the top of his lungs. Everybody just stops and just like, looks at him, like, uh, these are just houses, we're just uh, we're just trying to build some houses an exaggeration yeah, it gets pretty intense, so you're just trying to build some houses. It's an exaggeration. Yeah, it gets pretty intense. So you're not trying to do that, no.
Speaker 1:And you bring up a good point, jeff. So I have an example or a story where I was working in a different community and it really is a different community You're not just trying to protect the innocent or the guilty here but I was part of, I was doing my job and I had to go reach out to a business owner for a potential code enforcement issue. And I just want to give him a heads up because I was like, hey, this may be coming down, I'm not enforcement, but I want to make sure that, um, part of my job as a business liaison is to help help you guys through the thing, and that the next 10 minutes was just learning new um curse words and conjugations of those curse words and the accusation of you know, I pay your salary, you don't know how it feels and you don't do anything. And I looked at him. I said, well, if I don't do anything and I get paid the same amount of money whether I'm being proactive or reactive, why am I talking to you right now? I could be at my office right now and just collecting a check, and that's really, I know.
Speaker 1:I say that a little bit of tongue in cheek, but at the same time, we are committed to being accountable. We want to know how we can improve the resident experience, and David's team has done such a great job in the last six months. If you haven't, I would recommend all of your viewers to check out our Facebook pages, our social media. We have gone from just putting out some information to really being… A magazine.
Speaker 2:A magazine. We are content creators. Yeah, which you never thought we were going to have to get into Right.
Speaker 1:As a real estate agent too. I was like what?
Speaker 2:I have to do. How many videos I have to? Yeah, just trying to sell some houses.
Speaker 1:Right, I mean we're we're learning new dances just to make sure that we can stay relevant and in front of us. But I'll let David talk about why're trying to do with the city and it shows what we're like, what we can achieve yeah.
Speaker 4:So we, as Chaz uh Chaz mentioned, we've really been intentional about um, the, the stuff we're putting on social media, trying to build that audience, and we had a post this weekend that did it has it well. First of all, has anyone here done climb the stairs at Tech Ridge? Yep, anybody done?
Speaker 1:the stairs, yeah, yeah because we wanted to shame you, if not yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:It's 333 steps. It's amazing 333.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's, it's wild, I did it. I was up with uh, with bradby hannon, and we did it and uh, if you have kids.
Speaker 3:It's great bribery if they mess up or they go to the stairs. I'm going to the stairs.
Speaker 4:Be careful, though they're small enough, they might ask to be carried up.
Speaker 3:I know. Ask me how I know.
Speaker 4:But so we had an event there, the Dragon's Tail Stair Climb Challenge, on Saturday. We also celebrated the opening of it. Of course, I want to make this clear TechRidge paid for the staircase. Those weren't taxpayer funds, were not used, and it was actually pretty ingenious because it covered up a drainage scar and so, anyway, awesome public amenity. The public's going to be able to use this 24 seven, so we so we did the stair climb challenge and the very first race. This was the sprint portion. It was Brooke Ants, who is a noted CrossFit athlete. She's involved in involved in motion pictures. She's an entrepreneur. She's from here, she's from southern Utah. A lot of people know who she is. In fact, she grew up with McCray Hepler. He was talking about how they played night games together when they were little.
Speaker 3:Shredded by the way. Oh yeah, shredded you talk about fitness goals right there, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Unbelievable fitness goals right there, um, unbelievable. And then Isaac Barlow, he's the uh, the visionary of tech Ridge and they did a race. Of course, you know it wasn't a race. We all knew who was going to win. Right, we knew Brooke was going to win, but we wanted to have a race. And, um, so I, I just positioned myself, took a little you know short raw video clip 15 seconds didn't do anything to it and add any little effects, or didn't edit it and throw music, just raw video. Her finishing the steps, crossing. We hit, we had the tape held out by two of our council members and would you believe, on Facebook that videos had 1.5 million views.
Speaker 4:Wow, that's cool 1.5 million views on on instagram it's a around 400 000, but that's unbelievable.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that is incredible, and and so, um, obviously, you know it wasn't any skill of cinematography, it wasn't you know a lot of a lot of stars aligned to to make that happen, but it's the fact of being there, of capturing the moment, and and so that's we've really been focused on. The last little bit is improving our presence on on social media and please, please, follow us on Facebook, instagram, on YouTube, on LinkedIn. Those are kind of the four main channels that we're on. We haven't really been on X for a while, but you know, if you stumble upon X, you can add us, I guess. But, um, but those are the four main ones that we've really been putting extra energy into, and just just to showcase everything that the city does and to get ahead of things, right Cause, as you guys know, the rumors fly fast and if we're not ahead of things, if we're not getting getting the information out first, those rumors can take, uh, take on a life of its own yep, it's hard to turn it around once it's, once it's headed down a certain path.
Speaker 2:It's very, very tough to get the.
Speaker 3:I think, I think just kind of to add to those two points. I think one of the cool things about saint george whether you've been here for two years or six months or 25 years people that move here and and um and buy homes here and want to stay here it's because they love it and they want to be here, right? So I think that's one big thing that sets St George aside from you know, like an Orem or Brigham City or something like that, as maybe Ogden is an example.
Speaker 2:but People are intentional about moving here and wanting to add to the community. Yeah, they want to stay here, they want to add to the community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they want to stay here. They want to add to the community. So to to kind of maybe circle back to your point about um wanting to to do good things for the city, we're not going to do this. City officials aren't going to do a bad deal because they also live here. They also moved here for a reason.
Speaker 2:And they want to be here. Sometimes they make bad deals, but for the most part Not intentional. Yeah, not intentional. It's not intentional For sure, and I think as we grow organically.
Speaker 3:it's like a fork in the road type thing right, when we can either let things happen to us or we can work together to make things better as we grow, Because we're going to grow anyway. People want to be here. Yeah, absolutely better as we grow because we're going to grow anyway.
Speaker 1:People want to be here, yeah, and for me, I think sometimes the I think the accusation would be a good word for it is you know, we may be incentivized to, like Chad Chad's incentivized to do these deals Right. And I started off saying, of the total economic development projects, I've done over a billion dollars of economic development deals. Um, so if I took a consultant fee off of that let's just say 3% I could probably retire. I am not retired, I am needing this job as much as possible. So it's really interesting when you hear that claim of I may be incentivized in that way. It's really.
Speaker 1:We really want to do what's best for this community and St George is an amazing place. I mean, you think of another community in the United States that is about 110,000 that may have two Costco's, great weather. Great weather has an amazing downtown, has a great community, great place to raise your family, great schools, over 50 parks where Low crime, great healthcare. I've lived here for two years. I have not been to every park. Yeah, where else can you say that in America?
Speaker 1:And it's just such an amazing place to live and so we want to. We want to main like we get to stand on the shoulders of amazing decisions that were made before us, and so here at the city, we need to progress. At the same time, we want to protect the heritage of our community and so we want to make sure, and that's part of our, our. You'll see if we come out to the state of the city. You really want to thread that, because sometimes when you rebrand, you progress, there's that potential being too progressive or that you're losing who you are. It might be leaving people behind.
Speaker 4:And we don't want to do that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to bring people with us. And so, going back to the economic development thing, where it's rising tide lifts all boats. If and I always say this if the boats have holes in them, it does. The rising tide doesn't help them out, right? And so we are committed to making sure that, whether it be, you know, whatever service we're providing, and even like for our small business community, we don't want the tide to rise and sink our small businesses. So we are, we are committed, we're committed to that, and we're going to even start using Qualtrics even more Qualtrics, if, for those that don't know, is you know, it's a great survey online platform, um, data collection, data collection and we're going to start surveying and we're going to come out with a business survey to see how we're doing.
Speaker 1:How did the business, how's the business community feel that we're doing, whether it be, whether it be infrastructure policy, how can we be better? Um, and kind of back to your comment of being like a keyboard warrior we need more than this sucks. Yeah, I need to need to know, like, what are some solutions? Or at least be specific. Yeah, because, like, just you know, hated it. Okay, what do you hate and what's that expectation? Yeah, and because I can guarantee you that the people, the professionals that work at the City of St George, we are all committed to making sure that we provide the highest level of service for the lowest cost possible.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, we need more than the anecdotal yeah Right, we need good, solid data that we can um that that our council members can use to help them make decisions, yeah, and if you missed our budget process, we actually um man, I just, I was so excited to do that and watch that whole thing, but yeah, I miss that.
Speaker 1:I mean your viewers have a hard time watching. You know 60 minutes of podcast.
Speaker 2:Imagine watching five hours of budget meetings.
Speaker 4:We have people at the city that love that, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah they're one person, one person, robert. Right Robert, yeah, robert.
Speaker 2:You know he's a blessed soul. Yeah, they're one person, One person Robert.
Speaker 1:Right, robert, yeah, robert, you know he's a blessed soul.
Speaker 2:Anybody who's good with numbers like that. Though you got to hold on to them, someone's got to do it, someone's got to do it, someone's got to do it All right. Well, I want to wrap us up here. I think this is a great conversation. I think it's going to be helpful for people to development side of things and as we get into this year, we're back into an election season. We got two city council seats. In every city in the county we have mayors. All the mayors are up for election.
Speaker 2:You, just when you thought you were done with elections, we're back to the local election process. So we're committed at the 435 podcast to give you as much information about these big decisions understanding the economic development, understanding energy, understanding land development and use. So we're going to continue that through the rest of this year and we're going to have the mayors on and interviews for the candidates that are going to be running for the different offices. So keep staying tuned into this and thanks, guys, for taking the time. Hopefully get that Oakley sponsorship. I think you deserve it. You're doing a great job.
Speaker 2:But, you guys. You guys have a great day and thanks, thanks for tuning in, guys. We'll see you out there. Thanks for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Make sure you're following us on all the social media websites. We love your support. We love the dialogue. We want to continue that going.
Speaker 3:Find us at realestate435.com. We'd love to help you find a house here in town or help you get wherever you're going.