TOOELE -- At the former Tooele Army Depot, they've gone from storing bullets to making bucks, from rebuilding combat trucks to making T-shirts.
In almost one year of operation, Depot Associates have already surpassed their first-year goals, transforming the one-time war machine into a peacetime showcase of free enterprise."We feel we did one-and-a-half year's worth of work in 11 months," said Mark Smith, depot assets manager.
During that time, owners of the depot leased 253,000 square feet of space to new businesses and created 168 new jobs in Tooele. Within five years, the depot is expected to employ more than 6,000 workers -- the same number of jobs that once existed during the Tooele Army Depot's peak years as a key military installation. "They're off to a good, solid start," said Tooele Mayor Charlie Roberts.
The 1,700-acre base was shut in 1993, one of many military facilities to be closed across the nation as part of a cost-cutting binge by Congress and the White House. To soften the blow of base closures to local economies, many of the bases have been turned over to local governments or entrepreneurs.
The Army turned the Tooele Army Depot over to the city of Tooele in January 1999. A local development group called Endeavor bought it, then turned around and sold it to Depot Associates, a development group formed specifically for the project. "Endeavor owned it for a minute," Smith said.
Smith, a Salt Lake City real estate developer, joined with three partners from Phoenix and Denver to form Depot Associates, which bought the defunct Tooele Army Depot for $20 million.
Ideally situated for distribution of goods throughout the West, Smith saw it as a potential gold mine. There are 24 miles of railroad tracks inside the depot, and Union Pacific runs 15 freight trains daily to Los Angeles. The industrial park is just off I-80, a few miles west of Tooele and within 25 minutes of the Salt Lake International Airport.
"It's strategically located close to transportation corridors," Smith said.
There's also the growing community of Tooele, where businesses can draw their work force, he added. About 8,000 homes will be built over the next 15 years from one housing development on the northwest side of Tooele.
"We're going to have a reservoir of talent," Smith predicted.
Smith has residential building plans of his own. He hopes to eventually build 1,150 homes near Utah 36 where 22 Army barracks are. Olympic organizers are considering using the barracks to house Olympic workers during the 2002 Winter Games in Utah.
After the Olympics, more residential development will be needed because the 16 million square feet of buildings in the industrial park, when occupied, could potentially employ 22,000 people.
But the entire development won't happen overnight. "It will take 15 years for build-out," Smith said.
Just in the first year, owners spent $3 million to renovate the old buildings and entice major clients. They've installed fiber optics for state-of-the-art communications, and they are installing a new natural-gas line.
They've already succeeded in attracting a hodgepodge of companies, large and small -- 25 of them in all. There's a self-employed upholster, a self-employed welder, a truck distributor with six employees, a log furniture manufacturer with another 18. A printing company employing 13 people moved in before the privatization. And the May Department Stores chain has 12 employees who now store ZCMI inventory at the depot.
Also at the depot is the Oquirrh Mountain Christian Fellowship. "We have complete diversity," Smith said. "Who would have thought we'd have a church in a business park?"
The Army's old buildings make it a natural to attract a wide variety of industrial clients. There's 125 steel storage tanks that once held military equipment and munitions that now store items for commerce. Another building has 60,000 square feet of office space, perfect for a telecommunications center, Smith said.
Then there's the granddaddy of them all: A 200,000-square-foot building where the Army used to build tanks. It's complete with 23 cranes, 300 work stations for welders and thousands of amps of electrical power. It's perfect for a truck manufacturer like Freightliner or Peterbilt. "We're looking for that one square needle in the hay stack," Smith said, "Not a round one."
It was the 90,000-square-foot building that prompted Cari Allen to buy the Salt Lake company Log Furniture Inc.
The warehouse was once used by the Army to mass-produce crates shipped off during Desert Storm. All of its wood-working equipment, the multidrill presses, the automatic stacker, the dust-collection system, has cut down Allen's labor costs. What took 30 minutes to drill pieces of timber to make a dresser now takes 30 seconds, Allen said.
Then there are tenants who never left. Ad-Vantage Owner Cheri Dare and partner Brent Johnson are leasing the Army's old print shop to do almost the same thing. But they have gone from printing road signs to printing designs on T-shirts.
Dare worked for the Army 25 years. When she heard of the base closing, she decided to stay put but go into business herself.
"That was always my dream," Dare said. "The base closure gave me the opportunity."
Smith said he and his partners plan to spend $10 million to make additional renovations to the buildings. Tooele County and the city also have committed $12 million to build a new $29 million road to the north that connects directly to I-80.
It's needed for truck transport, said Roberts. And Tooele needs the industrial park, he added.
The entire project has changed the way people think about Tooele.
"People move here for the lifestyle but not the jobs," Roberts said. "We'd like to turn that around."