RIVERTON -- Intel Corp. said Wednesday it will buy a 45-acre plot that has the potential of becoming a major research and development campus here.
Mayor Sandra Lloyd is delighted."This is the most wonderful thing for the entire community," she said.
The city has been courting Intel for more than a year. City officials learned just last night that California-based Intel decided to complete a purchase option on the Riverton site bounded by 13400 South and 12600 South and 3600 West and the Bangerter Highway.
Access to Salt Lake International Airport was a selling point to Intel, Lloyd said.
"We are going to purchase the land," said Intel spokesman Bill Calder. "It's one more step in our effort to consolidate our existing operations in Utah and provide us another site for growth over the long term."
Beyond the land purchase, Intel's work will continue to be somewhat methodical. "We don't have a firm construction time line or schedule," Calder said. "We don't even really have a firm construction plan for the first building. We'll have that later this year.
"Once that first building goes up, the only occupants we've identified so far are current (Intel) employees in Utah, and that's about 350 people."
Intel has said previously a decision on whether to proceed with plans to build a major research campus on the 45-acre Riverton parcel would be made by the corporation's board of directors. "I wouldn't tie (the announcement) to any specific board decision."
Calder went on to say Intel has received tremendous support from the governor's office, state and private business development entities and Riverton city officials.
David Winder, executive director of the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development, has been poised for the announcement along with other Utah officials anxious to see Intel's board of directors give the Riverton project a green light. Given the limited scope of Intel's announcement Wednesday, Utah officials will keep waiting to see how fully Intel implements its long-term plan for the Riverton campus.
"It's just about ideal from an economic development professional's standpoint," Winder said recently. "Intel is, without question, a world-class company."
The first phase in Intel's master plan that could open in 2000 would include a four-story building that would house the 350 Utah workers now at sites in Taylorsville and American Fork in Utah County.
In all, 8,000 people could eventually work in high-tech, high-paying jobs at the Riverton Intel site that when fully developed is expected to have up to seven buildings.
The jobs would pay about $40,000 a year, Lloyd said. It would employ young people in the state, she added.
The Jordan School District has expressed concerns about the facility's proximity to two newly built schools.
Lloyd said Intel is willing to work to mitigate road congestion.
In September the state's Business and Economic Development Board gave the company a $5 million industrial assistance loan, the largest the state has ever offered as a business development incentive.
The Riverton City Council in November approved the master site plan of the Intel campus' first phase.
The Riverton council in December also approved several incentives to draw Intel here
Among other things it established an Economic Development Area to freeze the taxable value of the 47 acres that will become home to Intel's campus and adopted a budget that gives the microchip manufacturer more than $10 million in tax incentives over a 12-year period to offset the cost of roads, utilities and other improvements to the site.
The Intel site has been a welfare farm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.