Explanation Utah manufacturer announces expansion into Pocatello By Arik Hesseldahl A Utah medical products manufacturer wants to bring 150 jobs to
Pocatello with the hopes of increasing that number to 400 within the next three
years, and they will make their home in the Idaho State University Research
Park. The State Board of Education approved a last-minute request by ISU
officials to swap land with Ballard Medical Products of Draper, Utah. Ballard
wants to acquire 20 acres in the ISU Research Park, on the west side of Alvin
Ricken Drive just south of the veterans home to build an 80,000- to 100,000
square foot manufacturing facility. The company hopes break ground on Oct. 1.
In exchange, ISU will get slightly more than 32 acres of land adjacent to the
southwestern boundary of the research park, east of the former Jessie Clark
Christian School building, that ISU recently acquired in a land swap deal with
American Microsystems Inc. The section of land is known as the Sherburne
property, and has been appraised at a value of $113,680. The land is also
adjacent to a 34-acre section of land that was donated to ISU in 1994. Another
piece of land, that has yet to be agreed upon, will also go to ISU as part of the
exchange. Bowen would not specify what land that is. "There are three or four
options there. But we know which one we prefer," Bowen said. The property that
will go to Ballard, which is based in Draper, Utah, is valued at $240,000. ISU
vice president of financial services Bob Pearce said products in Ballard's
manufacturing lines include soaps and sanitary products and dispensers, plastic
tubing, syringes, and other plastic implements used by medical and health care
professionals. Pearce said the Ballard's manufacturing process is clean and
produces no waste. "This is a good industry to attract to the area. It's very
compatible with the research park and with the kinds of things that we are
involved with instructionally," Pearce said. Ballard reported an estimated $85
million in sales last year and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It
currently employs about 800 people at it's Utah plant. In memo to the board,
ISU president Richard Bowen said the benefits of the exchange to ISU include:
Development of the property will involve the extension of Alvin
Ricken Drive, plus improvements to the area's infrastructure, including water and
electrical services. Bowen said he expects that Alvin Ricken Drive will go
clear across to Barton Road and that the infrastructure improvements will include
a significant upgrade of the electrical capacity of the research park. Those
improvements will be handled by the city of Pocatello, and will be financed
through tax-increment financing, Pearce said. Tax-increment financing, Pearce
explained, works through the increased tax revenue generated by improvements in a
designated Revenue Allocation District, which the AMI site and the research park
are. The tax money generated by AMI's increased property tax bill, plus the money
that will be generated by Ballard's construction, will go toward paying for the
improvements. The land that ISU will receive will first be purchased by the
Eastern Idaho Strategic Alliance. Money for the purchase will come from EISA and
Lockheed Idaho.
This business story broke at the
State Board of Education Meeting in Pocatello. What I though was going to be a
fairly routine two-day meeting turned out to have some front-page news on its
agenda.
400 new jobs expected within three years
Of The
Journal
"Their
motivations to expand in Pocatello are several, with the desire to to reduce
their dependence on a single labor pool being high on the list," Bowen wrote to
the board.
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