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Taylorsville •With its aging malls and business centers, this suburb of 60,000 might not seem like a promising place to set up shop.
Rand and Jo Kunz beg to differ.
When the two bought a Great Harvest Bread Co. franchise in Taylorsville in 1995, their accountants told them they were foolish because the store was failing. And they weren't the only ones who said this community was a bad location.
"People said it would never work around here," Rand Kunz said. "We decided to give it a shot. Man, am I glad we did."
Today the store makes more than $1 million in sales a year, Kunz said. He credits Taylorsville itself, which he said was a "sleepy sort of surprise."
"It comes down to the people," he said. "We were embraced by the people in Taylorsville by offering something new and different."
City administrators aren't surprised by the Great Harvest success. They say Taylorsville is packed with shoppers willing to open their wallets, a factor that they're touting in an increased effort to entice businesses to come here.
"In this business climate, companies are all about facts and figures before they make a decision," Economic Development Director Donald Adams said.
So officials reel them off.
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By the numbers •With approximately 10 square miles, Taylorsville is the most densely populated city in Utah, with plenty of residents near every shopping center and office building in town.
Taylorsville is right in the middle of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, a place that thousands of people traverse each day and one that contains the busiest surface-street intersection in the state: 5400 South and Redwood Road.
Then there's Salt Lake Community College, which educates future employees and attracts 20,000 to 25,000 people a day to its Taylorsville campus.
Software that computes the number of consumers within a five-minute drive to a shopping center or a business — and their average income — is a key element in persuading companies that Taylorsville is the place for them. And online tool Taylorsville Prospector helps businesses sort through data, including available buildings and demographics in specific areas, to determine the perfect spot.
Aimee Newton, who was hired in August as Taylorsville's first marketing and communications director, said the city's statistics impress business people. The population density, in particular, "knocks their socks off," she said.
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On the hunt •Adams and Newton are part of an economic development team created by Mayor Russ Wall, who said in his State of the City address earlier this year that Taylorsville could end up a bedroom community with "exorbitantly high property taxes" unless it boosts other revenues. The team is seeking businesses that will add sales tax to the bottom line, create new jobs and stay in the community a long time.
Targets include restaurants, entertainment centers and anchor stores. They also encourage high-tech, communications, engineering, financial and other types of businesses to move in.
Backing the drive is $10 million in bonds to fund infrastructure improvements and financial incentives. The City Council approved issuing them in late 2010.
Wall, who wanted the bonds as seed money to better compete against other cities, said companies eventually give back more than they get. Economic development is such a priority for the mayor that he's paying Newton's salary out of his own budget.
Mark McGrath, director of community development, said Taylorsville is surrounded by cities that actively pursue new business. If a store or a restaurant already has a location in West Valley City and in Murray, the business will leapfrog over Taylorsville, he said.
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Takes money to make money • Councilwoman Dama Barbour, who is part of the team, supports using financial incentives, saying that without enough revenue coming in from business, a city's choice is to cut services or raise taxes.
"I don't have a problem with being frugal but sometimes you can be too lean to be mean," she said. "People are going right through Taylorsville and they don't realize what we have here."
Newton acknowledged that the city has not always gotten the word out about all the pluses of being part of Taylorsville.
"We struggle with the perception that we are not a strong community for business," she said.
That many of the malls in the city were built in the 1970s and 1980s fuels that perception. Adams said all cities have the same problem when their shopping centers start reaching the end of their life cycles: People turn to newer developments.
"Centers are built, centers age, centers are revitalized," he said. "We're redeveloping our centers to make them the new destination that everyone is talking about."
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Money to spend •Because Taylorsville already was built out when it incorporated in 1996, team members focus on revitalizing existing shopping and business centers rather than building from the ground up.
That effort includes landscaping, street work and infrastructure improvements that make it easy for customers to get to where they're going, such as continuous flow intersections, traffic lights and turn lanes.
"We can move our customers more efficiently than anyone in the valley," Adams said.
And once they arrive at their destination, Taylorsville residents have money to spend. Many residents, whose average household income is $76,000, have paid down their mortgages, Adams said.
"Our population is not highly leveraged," he said. "They're not house poor."
Retail sales have been relatively stable in Taylorsville, according to Adams. He said the sales tax collected even rose to $715,137 in June 2011 from $652,468 in June 2010.
Other positive figures: The city has 755 store-front businesses, 850 home occupation businesses, about 17,000 jobs and about 17,000 households.
That ratio of one job to one household is among Taylorsville's best draws, according to McGrath. The workers provide a daytime population that supports businesses, unlike some suburbs that have high nighttime populations but fewer people to patronize restaurants and shops in the morning and afternoon.
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Stories of success •Skechers opened a store at 5443 S. Redwood Road as a temporary location in September 2010 but now has decided to take a long-term lease. The shoe store is doing a full remodel and is scheduled to reopen on Oct. 28.
Taylorsville's central location was a big draw in 1994, when Nelson Laboratories, then at Research Park near the University of Utah, needed more space. The company has been able to cast a wide net for its 400 employees because its facility is minutes away from the freeway and right on a bus line, which makes the commute easy for its workers, CEO and president Jeffery Nelson said.
Nelson Labs, which provides microbiology testing services for medical devices and pharmaceutical products, added a building last year to its campus at 6280 S. Redwood Road, and Nelson said city administrators helped make the permit process easy.
"I was really pleased with how cooperative they were and how business friendly they were," he said.
Rand Kunz also said the city was helpful when he and his wife were looking for a bigger place for their bakery and sandwich shop two years ago. They ended up building a small strip mall at 6357 S. Redwood Road, about a mile from their old location.
"My only criteria was we needed to stay in Taylorsville," Kunz said. "We're very pleased about being in Taylorsville. We love it."
twitter: @PamelaMansonSLC —
Economic boost
Scott Sommerdorf | The Salt Lake Tribune
Taylorsville has created an economic development team that focuses on bringing in new companies and revitalizing its existing shopping and business centers.
The team • Mayor Russ Wall, foreground, and, clockwise from lower left, City Administrator John Inch Morgan, City Engineer John Taylor, Marketing and Communications Director Aimee Newton, Economic Development Director Donald Adams, Community Development Director Mark McGrath and Councilwoman Dama Barbour.