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Incentives bring still more jobs to Utah [Enterprise, The (UT)](Enterprise, The (UT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jive Communications will create more than 570 jobs in Utah County and Environmental StoneWorks will create 124 jobs in St. George over the next few years, the companies announced last week after receiving state incentives. The incentives for the companies were awarded by the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) board. Jive was approved for a $938,321 tax credit tied to the creation of 576 jobs over five years in a $6.4 million project. "We're proud to be a Utah-based company," John Pope, Jive's chief executive officer, said in a prepared statement. "The state has a wealth of technical and business professionals, and we're able to hire worldclass talent here at home." The Orem-based company was founded in 2006 and provides enterprise-grade hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and unified communications to businesses and institutions. It partners with Cisco, Level 3, Verizon, Panasonic and Polycom and delivers hosted communications via Jive Cloud, its hosted services platform. The company already has 200 employees in Utah. It has added more than 100 employees overall the past year. "It's a relatively new company that's been quickly growing and had some pretty remarkable success over the last little while," Jerry Oldroyd, chairman of the board's incentives committee, said. Oldroyd said Utah faced competition for the project primarily from Arizona but that the company also had considered Massachusetts. "It's a significant development in Utah County. We would like to see them stay here and grow," he said. The new jobs are expected to result in wages totaling $131 million over five years and $6.3 million in new state tax revenue during that period. The incentive requires that the jobs pay at least 25 percent above the Utah County average wage. Environmental Stone Works' $2 million project features the building of a manufacturing facility in Washington County to produce stone veneer, the company's primary product. Environmental StoneWorks manufactures and installs that product, but the incentive is tied only to the manufacturing operations. "We currently have a very small facility in St. George and this is a tremendous opportunity for us to expand our operations," Lance Sutter, chief financial officer, told the board. "We'll be shipping a significant amount of stone and producing stone out of St. George for the West as we move toward California, shipping into Phoenix and up into Washington eventually." Founded in 1978, the company has manufacturing facilities in St. George; Denver; Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Georgia. It has more than 800 employees in 18 installation hubs across the nation. The company's $514,304 tax credit incentive over 10 years is expected to result in new jobs paying nearly $41 million in wages and resulting in $2.6 million in state tax revenue during that period. The jobs must pay at least the Washington County average wage, including benefits, to be eligible for the incentive. "This, I know, is very, very important to St. George and Washington County," Oldroyd said. "They've been actively involved. This is one of their projects. I think in terms of rural incentives, it couldn't get better than this, to be honest with you." (c) 2014 Enterprise Business Newspaper Inc. |