The Tooele Transcript Bulletin’s 2015 Person of the Year is Randy Sant, Tooele City’s economic development consultant.
Sant has worked 30 years for the city, doing a variety of consulting work. Among the many hats Sant wears at City Hall are economic development, grant writing, lobbying, property sales, and redevelopment agency specialist.
In 2015, Sant was front and center in the top story of the year in Tooele County — economic development. His work has resulted in a significant boost in local jobs for residents and a property tax boost for taxing entities.
When Cabela’s opened its $88 million catalog and distribution center in the Ninigret Depot in September 2015, employment in Tooele County grew by 265 full-time and part-time jobs, with the potential of a future total of up to 400 jobs, including seasonal workers during peak season.
Tooele City Mayor Patrick Dunlavy gave much credit to Sant for the economic development success.
“Randy Sant was essential to bringing Cabela’s to Tooele,” he said. “Without Randy, they probably wouldn’t be here. He worked on it for eight years.”
The process of bringing Cabela’s to Tooele is a good example of sowing first and reaping later, according to Sant.
The first hint that Cabela’s might come to Tooele came from the Economic Development Corporation of Utah.
“It was 2006 and I got a call from EDCU,” Sant said. “They said they had a large distribution facility that needed a western location. They didn’t say who it was.”
At the time, Walmart had just decided to put its distribution center in Grantsville instead of at the Industrial Depot. EDCU thought the Industrial Depot site might be good for this one, according to Sant.
“We went to the EDCU office to meet with people from the company,” Sant said. “They didn’t identify themselves or give us business cards. We had no idea who we were talking to.”
The conversation quickly turned to incentives, but Sant put off the topic, citing the city’s position that incentives aren’t discussed until discussions get further down the road.
A few months layer the company came back to Tooele with a different group of people and did an onsite visit.
“We showed them the site at the Industrial Depot that Walmart had looked at along with some of the recreational opportunities,” Sant said. “But we still didn’t know who were talking to.”
Six months later, EDCU called Sant to tell him the anonymous company was putting their plans to build a distribution center on hold for six months, he said.
“A year and half later the company came back with one of their real estate guys and looked at sites and talked some more,” he said.
Still there was no hint of who the company was, Sant said.
“It was three years ago when we went into a meeting at EDCU, we walked in and they were all wearing Cabela’s shirts, then we knew who we had been talking to,” he said.
Initially, they wanted to test the waters to see how things worked. One of their big concerns was finding a workforce, according to Sant.
“We told them that Tooele’s unemployment rate was a little higher than the state average, so we probably had more workers looking for jobs,” Sant said. “We also told them that if they offered the right wage, they could pick up people that didn’t want to commute to Salt Lake for work.”
In 2013, Cabela’s rented part of the former Reckitt Benckiser building in the Miller Motorsports Business Park. The company advertised for 50 part-time temporary seasonal employees and got over 120 applications.
“The applications were all from good people, too,” Sant said.
The temporary situation worked so well that Cabela’s officials were interested in a permanent home in Tooele, according to Sant.
Cabela’s looked at building in the Miller Motorsports Business Park and at Ninigret Depot and eventually chose the Ninigret site.
When it came to incentives, Tooele City agreed to return up to $4 million of property taxes to Cabela’s over a 15-year period.
But to get that incentive, Cabela’s must qualify each year by employing at least 178 full-time workers at or above the median wage in the county. If that term isn’t met, $3,000 will be deducted from the incentive for every employee less than 178.
“We learned early on in the discussions that they were looking at sites in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, California, and New Mexico,” Sant said. “If we weren’t willing to offer some kind of incentive, we would have been off the list very early in the game.”
The tax incentive agreement also required that Cabela’s investment in the county be worth at least $40 million.
The county has not assessed the Cabela’s facility yet. However, at last September’s ribbon-cutting ceremony — held eight years after the first call Sant received from EDCU — Tommy Millner, Cabela’s president and chief executive officer, said the company spent $88 million on the building, equipment, furniture and fixtures, and the latest technology.
Sant also played a multi-year part in the effort that got Airgas, a Pennsylvania-based supplier of industrial, medical, and specialty gases, to open a 20,000-square-foot facility in Ninigret Depot in May 2015.
Airgas invested $6.5 million in its new facility, which initially employed 14 people with plans to grow to 25.
“There isn’t a lot of jobs there, but they pay well above the county’s median wage,” Sant said.
Bringing business to the county is really a team effort, according to Sant.
“The Cabela’s deal wouldn’t have been possible first without the support of the staff at EDCU,” he said. “Then it takes good partners like the school district and the county that had to agree to a delay of their share of property tax to make an incentive work.”
Sant went on with a list of people that helped.
“The city council had to approve the tax incentive, the mayor and his staff had to agree to give the Cabela’s project priority for approvals and inspections, and the people of Tooele proved that they were a willing, able and competent workforce. I did not do this alone,” Sant said. “And sometimes they take a little time.”
