Educational Profile of the Mountainland Region

Cory Stahle, Regional Economist

Several of our past blog posts have highlighted the statewide education levels of Utah; however, little has been written about the educational makeup of counties and regions. The 2014 American Community Survey (ACS), released December 2015, provides data that profiles education levels by county. This article will focus primarily on the Mountainland Region and its counties.

Understanding educational attainment for an area is important for two reasons. First, it is generally acknowledged that obtaining higher education yields increased income. This increase can then improve living standards and aid in long-term economic growth. Second, education is both a product and driver of the types of jobs available. A highlight of the educational characteristics in the Mountainland Region follows.

According to the 2014 ACS, 38 percent of individuals 25 years and older held a bachelor’s degree or higher in the region. Of the four counties included, this category was the highest in Summit County at 50 percent and the lowest in Juab County at 16 percent. Utah and Wasatch counties fell near the average with 37 and 34 percent respectively. When compared in the graphic below, all counties are above national and state averages for bachelor’s and higher except Juab. Lack of employer demand for workers with advanced education is one possible explanation for the bachelor’s degree lag in Juab County.

Employment by Major Industry

Employment by Major Industry (or Nonfarm Employment) is compiled payroll data for nonfarm workers. Nonfarm workers are all employees excluding government employees, private household employees, employees of nonprofit organizations and farm employees. DWS economists have broken these documents into county regions and are an important economic indicator of the current economic situation. For more: Why no "Farm" in Nonfarm Jobs?

Second quarter 2014 has been updated for counties in the Mountainland region. These can be found on each county's page in the links to right, as well as below.

• Juab County
• Summit County
• Utah County
• Wasatch County

Salt Lake‐Utah county line a wellspring of economic vitality

In northern Utah County, hundreds of workers at IM Flash Technologies turn the silicon in common sand into speedy, power-efficient flash memory chips that store songs, photos, documents and other data in mobile phones, cameras and tablets.

Just up the road, in Salt Lake County, eBay unwrapped its new 240,000-square-foot Draper campus last month. The buildings accommodate 1,800 people who carry out customer service, software development, human resources and legal and accounting work for the e-commerce giant.

IM Flash and eBay are near Point of the Mountain, the east-west range that separates Salt Lake and Utah counties. It is here where a substantial chunk of Utah’s economic vitality is being created. Salt Lake Tribune

Suburban Utah sees huge spike in poverty

A new book released yesterday shows that between 2000 and 2011, the rise in suburban poverty rose 64 percent, more than twice the growth rate of poverty in cities.

By 2011, almost 16.4 million suburban residents nationwide lived below the federal poverty level — now surpassing the number of impoverished city dwellers by 3 million, according to Confronting Suburban Poverty in America, written by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Program.

Surprisingly, the suburban areas of three Utah cities ranked among the book’s top 15 in terms of fastest-growing poverty: Salt Lake City came in third with a 142 percent jump, the Provo-Orem area ranked eighth with a 129 percent increase and Ogden-Clearfield came in 14th with a bump of 105 percent.

Berube and Kneebone see this rapid growth in suburban poverty as more than a temporary change caused by the recent recession. They attribute the rise to shifts in jobs and wages, population growth and immigration, collapse of the housing market and the foreclosure crisis. Salt Lake Tribune

Remodeling complete at three Macey’s stores

Macey’s grocery stores in West Jordan, Provo and Pleasant Grove are celebrated a grand reopening, which included new décor, sales and giveaways.

In 1947, Walt Macey and Dale A. Jones started the Save-A-Nickel-Market in Rose Park. Today, Macey’s supermarkets offer a made-from-scratch in-store bakery, delicatessen, full-service grocery, meat, produce and a non-foods department. Salt Lake Tribune

Ogden, Provo and Salt Lake City named top cities for career and family

An interactive map from Improvement Center rates the best cities to live in for 35 different categories. Some of the categories include: best holiday spirit, best for couples, best for women, low-stress, best for young professionals, most-caffeinated, most tax friendly and highest paying jobs.

Improvement Center lists Ogden at No. 5 in the category of highest median income.

Other Utah cities placed in the categories of best place to raise a family and best for business and careers. On the family list, Provo is third and Ogden is eighth. For best careers, Provo is first and Ogden sixth. Salt Lake City is also the fourth-best city for young professionals.

To view the map, visit ImprovementCenter.com

Deseret News

Building Utah's workforce key to becoming Silicon Valley East

Instead of a place to keep felons behind bars, the ground on which the Utah State Prison now sits could someday be the hub of a sprawling business community where bright minds unlock the door to new technology.

The burgeoning IT corridor in southern Salt Lake County and northern Utah County is poised to be the focal point of Utah's economic future. It's where the state's two largest metropolitan areas converge, both of which have major universities and expanding transportation systems. Companies including Adobe and eBay already call it home.

The governor and state lawmakers convening this week have key roles in preparing the state to take advantage of an anticipated boom, particularly in information technology and life sciences.
And a key component of that is education and building the workforce.

Companies like Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble came to Utah primarily because of its business-friendly environment and stellar workforce.

Those two firms account for nearly 2,600 jobs and will pay $437 million in corporate income tax over the next 20 years, all of which goes directly to public education, according to the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

But even though Utah has the second fastest growing economy in the nation, there are signs that the quality of the workforce might not be able to keep up in the technology arena.

Some top economic development officials fear a well-known company might decide against coming to Utah because the state wouldn't be able to supply enough tech-related graduates to fill its needs.
On average, public schools see about 14,000 new students a year, costing an additional $75 million annually.

Bringing a business like Goldman Sachs to Utah each year helps cover those growing education costs. Deseret News

Even as home prices, sales rise, Wasatch Front listings at 15-year low

The number of homes along the Wasatch Front listed for sale was at a 15-year low at the end of 2012, even as prices rose steadily through most of the year and sales gained ground.

The scarcity of homes on the market underlines the severity of the housing market’s collapse in Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties, as well as many Utahns’ uncertainty about the pace of the recovery, real estate experts say.

Listings peaked in the fourth quarter of 2007 at 14,683 homes, according to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, which cited figures compiled by the Wasatch Front Regional Multiple Listing Service. By the end of last year, that number, which includes foreclosures and short sales, had been cut to 7,229 — the lowest count since the fourth quarter of 1997, when 5,767 homes were on the market.

Myriad reasons are offered why sellers are holding back, even as demand for homes rises. Some say the 6 percent gain in the median price of a single-family home in Salt Lake County last year wasn’t enough to offset the sharpest decline in values since World War II.

"Prices dropped by 25 percent in Salt Lake County. So a [6 percent increase] is good news. But it’s not enough to motivate me to put my house on the market right now," said Jim Wood, director of the University of Utah’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research.


The economist owns a pair of homes and wants to sell one. Because he expects prices to rise 10 percent to 12 percent this year, he will wait awhile before listing it with an agent.

Like other experts, Wood believes the number of listings probably won’t fall further in 2013. Still, many potential sellers are more likely than not to stay on the sidelines until values rise further, he said.

Home sales in Salt Lake County jumped 15 percent last year, to 10,870 units from 9,452 in 2011. The gain was on top of a double-digit rise over 2010. Dave Frederickson, president of the Board of of Realtors, said worries that record low interest rates might rise soon is driving many buyers to snap up properties on the market — so much so that bidding wars have erupted over well-priced homes. And that’s pulled the inventory well under numbers that were typical before the housing bubble formed, he said.

"Interest rates have almost caused a feeding frenzy. It’s not allowing us to build back up supply. I don’t know if a lot of potential sellers out there even know [the housing market] has come back," Frederickson said. "The buyers are catching on to that quicker than the sellers are." Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake City welcomes FrontRunner South

The length of Salt Lake City's commuter rail network almost doubled on February 22, when Utah Transit Authority (UTA) opened its FrontRunner South extension from Salt Lake Central to Provo.

Construction began in August 2008 on the 45 mile line, which parallels the existing Union Pacific freight line south of the city into Utah County, with six new park-and-ride stations.

With a maximum line speed of 79 miles per hour, the journey time between Salt Lake Central and Provo is around an hour and ridership is expected to reach around 8,000 passengers per day by 2015.

The project is part of UTA's Front Lines 2015 program, which will add 69 miles to Salt Lake City's 63 mile commuter rail and light rail network by 2015. International Railway Journal

2011 Advance GDP by Metropolitan Area Released

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released gross domestic product estimates for the nation’s 366 metropolitan areas. In 2011, metropolitan area growth registered an average of 1.6 percent—just slightly higher than the U.S. total (1.5 percent). However, the growth rate for metro areas dropped noticeably from the 2010 expansion of 3.1 percent.

Only 242 of the nation’s metropolitan areas experienced a 2011 gain in GDP. However, all of Utah’s metro area’s showed increases equal to or greater than the U.S. metro average. Both Ogden/Clearfield and Provo/Orem generated gains of greater than 5 percent. Lowest on the scale proved the Logan metro area with a gain of only 1.6 percent. For more information on the current release, click here.

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Utah Senate committee debates prison relocation

Utah lawmakers are considering a plan to relocate the state prison in southwest Salt Lake County.

Sen. Scott Jenkins introduced legislation that creates an authority to manage the relocation of the Utah State Prison and evaluate proposals from companies seeking to build a new prison or develop the old site.

The Utah State Prison occupies about 700 acres in Draper where tech companies such as eBay and Microsoft have opened offices.

Gov. Gary Herbert has called on lawmakers to fund the relocation so the corridor can develop as a technology hub. State officials have been weighing relocation for several years.

The Utah State Prison was built in 1951 and houses about 4,500 inmates. Before that, Utah's state prison was at what is now Sugar House Park.

The state also operates a prison in Gunnison, the Central Utah Correctional Facility.

The goal is to get the legislation passed quickly so the authority can get up and running by April 15, as required by the bill, Sen. Scott Jenkins said.

The authority would then seek proposals from companies and come back to the Legislature and governor with a viable option.

It's unlikely any proposal would be ready to come before the Legislature by the time next year's session concludes, but the governor could convene lawmakers in a special session to approve the plan.

Some of the possible sites that have been considered for the new prison are in northwest Utah _ specifically Box Elder County, Juab County and Tooele County. Cache Valley Daily

Ski six of the best resorts in Utah

A glorious but demanding traverse of 1.9 miles up in Utah's Wasatch Mountains forms the most testing part of the Utah Interconnect, a 27-mile ski route between the state's six best resorts.

Utah prides itself on having "the greatest snow on earth", and however hyperbolic that may be, this guided adventure is one of North America's greatest days out on skis. It's a thrilling ski journey that uses a combination of lifts and easy backcountry skiing that any decent intermediate skier could manage and visits, in around six hours, Deer Valley, Park City, Solitude, Brighton, Alta and Snowbird. You are taken back to the start point in a minibus at the end of the day.

If they were linked, these resorts would easily make up the largest ski area in North America. The Interconnect offered a chance for a little backcountry expedition and a way to avoid any crowds as we skied from one hill to the other.

Greeting our mixed group of British, Texan, Canadian and Swedish skiers at the start point in Deer Valley, our guides Bob and Calvin told the nine of us that we'd need no special ski touring gear to complete the Interconnect and we should look upon it as much as a chance to ski Utah's best resorts, as a backcountry adventure.

When I booked the Interconnect I was given a ski pass that covers all the resorts to be visited – plus avalanche transceivers and a brief lesson in how to use them. In theory there's nothing to stop you doing the Interconnect independently, but I was glad to have the knowledge of a qualified guide. (And there could be legal implications should you get into trouble beyond the resorts' boundary ropes – this is the US after all).
Alta and Snowbird are linked by ski lift so it's easy getting from one to the other. It's hard for any keen skier not to love these two quintessential Utah resorts. They offer lots of steep, very challenging off-piste terrain plastered in dry chalky snow, fast and furious groomers and a friendly, old- school feel. Alta is so old-school that snowboarding is still banned there.

As we stood on the summit of Snowbird's 3,353m Hidden Peak ready for the last run of the day, my fellow traveller Lewis said, almost as if to himself: "Imagine this in powder …"

Whether he was talking about our last run, Snowbird or the entire Interconnect I'm not sure, but having experienced all three in far from ideal conditions and still had a ball I knew that like me, he was already talking himself into returning. Alf Anderson of The Guardian

Utah’s Ski Resorts Rate an ‘A’ for Awesomeness

 Forbes.com thinks Utah’s ski resorts are "awesome."

At least the areas rank high in "Pure Awesomeness," according to the business website, which this week published its list of "The Top 10 Ski Resorts in the United States for 2013." 

Seven of Utah’s resorts —Alta, Snowbird, Park City, Deer Valley, The Canyons, Brighton and Solitude — all landed in this year’s rankings based on Forbes’ hardly scientific and decidedly dorky "Pure Awesomeness Factor," or PAF.

"We only rank one thing: Awesomeness," the site said of its measuring algorithm. "It’s the most important thing we can measure. If you can know a place’s awesomeness, do you need to know anything else?"

The top spot went to Jackson, Wyo., for what Forbes said was the "best skiing mountain in North America. It still has the best continuous fall line, the best terrain and the best backcountry of any mountain not in the Himalayas."

Second were both Alta and Snowbird for "the terrain against which all others are measured," according to the site. "The snow is dependable and comes in a density that’s user friendly, like a stiff dollop of whipped milk on a cappuccino."

Park City, Deer Valley and The Canyons as a group were in fifth place, praised not only for the level of skiing but for the fact that they surround Park City, a place that is "picture perfect in every sense."

Brighton and Solitude landed eighth and ninth places on the list, respectively, not only for their quality of the snow but their comparative lack of crowds.

The rankings didn’t include resorts east of the Rocky Mountains because the website favored the West’s powder to the ice it claims covers ski areas in the eastern U.S.

"No resort east of the Rockies has the snow or terrain to crack our Awesomeness rankings — something that matters for both beginners and experts," the site said. Salt Lake Tribune

Utah Announces Bid for 2026 Winter Olympics

Utah officials plan to make another bid to hold the Winter Olympics.

Gov. Gary Herbert and Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker made the announcement Monday outside the University of Utah stadium, where ceremonies were held for the 2002 Winter Games.

A committee of advisers urged Herbert and Becker to make what could be a longshot bid for the 2026 Winter Games — other U.S. cities could argue it's their turn. Salt Lake faces possible challenges from Denver and the Reno-Tahoe area.

Utah says it can capitalize on the infrastructure left in place from the 2002 Olympics. The Utah games were successful, but Salt Lake was tarnished by scandal.

Utah showered $1 million in cash, gifts and other favors on International Olympic Committee delegates in a scandal that rewrote the rule book for Olympic bids. Herald Journal

How Do Utah's Largest Metro Areas Stack Up in Terms of Economic Competitiveness?

When evaluating the 100 most populous metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S., how do Utah's major metros stack up in terms of economic competitiveness? Very well, in fact.

A report out earlier this month on NewGeography.com says the Provo-Orem, Salt Lake City and Ogden-Clearfield metro areas all rank in the upper third of the top 100 metros in terms of competitiveness. Provo-Orem actually ranks fourth, behind San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX, and Bakersfield, CA, while the Salt Lake City metro ranks sixth. Ogden-Clearfield ranks 29th.

Of the Provo-Orem metro, NewGeography says: "This metro area just south of Salt Lake City has seen surprisingly large job gains in professional, scientific, and technical services; administrative and support services; specialty trade contractors; state/local government; and computer and electronic product manufacturing.

NewGeography.com says its goal with the rankings was to see which metros are becoming more competitive (gaining a larger share of total job creation) and which are losing their share of the jobs being created. Hence, all 100 metros were ranked based on the overall competitive effect and what percentage of jobs (from 2010-2012) are based on competitive effects.

To determine the competitiveness rankings, the organization analyzed data from Economic Modeling Specialists Intl (EMSI) using a method called "Shift-share." The analysis focused on overall job change from 2010-2012 in the 100 most populous metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the U.S.

As NewGeography.com explains, Shift-share analysis can also be referred to as "regional competitiveness analysis." It helped the organization distinguish between growth that is primarily based on big national forces (a rising tide lifts all boats) and local competitive advantages. The primary components of NewGeography.com's Shift-share analysis are:

• Industrial Mix Effect -- Representing the share of regional industry growth explained by the growth of the specific industry at the national level.
• National Growth Effect -- This explains how much of the regional industry’s growth is explained by the overall growth of the national economy.
• Expected Change -- This is simply the rate of growth of the particular industry at the national level (equals the sum of the industrial mix and national growth effects).
• Regional Competitiveness Effect -- This explains how much of the change in a given industry is due to some unique competitive advantage that the region possesses, because the growth cannot be explained by national trends in that industry or the economy as whole.

"To generate our ranking, we summed the overall competitive effect for each broad 2-digit industry sector (e.g., agriculture, manufacturing, health care, construction, etc.) and added them together to yield a single MSA-wide number that indicates the overall competitiveness of the economy as compared to the total economy. We calculate the competitive effect by subtracting the expected jobs (the number of jobs expected for each MSA based on national economic trends) from the total jobs.

"The difference between the total and expected is the competitive effect. If the competitive effect is positive, then the MSA has exceeded expectations and created more jobs than national trends would have suggested. It is therefore gaining a greater share of the total jobs being created. If the competitive effect is
negative, then the MSA is below what we would expect given national trends. In this case the MSA is losing a greater share of the total jobs being created," NewGeography.com explains. Utah Policy

Paper Supply Firm Xpedx Closing Salt Lake, Orem Stores

The office supply, packaging and paper company xpedx is closing its Salt Lake City and Orem retail stores on Nov. 30.

All inventory is being sold at 50 percent off while supplies last.

The company’s warehouse at 1635 S. 5070 West and distribution center at 2962 S. State St. in Salt Lake City will remain in operation.

Spokeswoman Lisa H. Jester said the two retail stores, which stock seasonal and party supplies, "represent a very small part of the xpedx business. The vast majority [of what we do] is our business-to-business service," including distribution of packaging, office and printing supplies.

Seven employees will be laid off in the closures, said Jester. About 150 employees work in the firm’s other Utah operations.

News reports have said xpedx, based in Cincinnati, has already closed its facilities in Canada. In addition, the company said on its Facebook page in January that it plans to close all of its U.S. retail outlets in a move to realign the company. The entry did not indicate how many stores or employees would be impacted.

"This means we will transition away from our store business model to servicing customers from xpedx’s well-established distribution network," said the Facebook entry. "We will also open ‘mini-merchant’ locations based in some of the country’s top digital print markets. While this is the right decision for xpedx overall, it will lead to the closing of our stores division, which will unfortunately affect many talented and dedicated team members."


 Jester said that shuttering the Utah outlets are the last of the store closures and consolidations.

Shopper Cindy Strong said no other store matches the inventory at xpedx. The Salt Lake City woman was filling a shopping cart Tuesday with tiny boxes for her homemade chocolates that she’ll give out as holiday gifts and with an assortment of packaging and party goods.

"I’m stocking up, but there’ll be no place else to go when this store closes," she said. "This is a one-stop kind of store."
Jonathan Hall, who operates a wholesale gift company in Park City, said he regularly shops at xpedx and was sad "that the employees are being laid off so close to the holidays."

The company is a division of International Paper, one of the largest business-to-business distribution companies in North America.

International Paper’s roots date to the early 19th century, according to the company’s website. International Paper entered the distribution business in 1986 with the acquisition of several longtime merchant companies, and in 1998 created xpedx. Salt Lake Tribune

UTOPIA Completes Network in First City

UTOPIA, the fiber-optic broadband service built by 11 Utah cities, announced Friday it has completed the network in its first city. Trunk lines, which are the network’s backbone, have been built out in 100 percent of Centerville.

That means all of Centerville’s residents and businesses can subscribe to the high-speed Internet service, save for areas that need approval from home owners associations or private-property owners with multiple-dwelling units.

"Twenty-two percent of our single-family homes take advantage of UTOPIA’s lightning-fast speeds and significant savings, and we expect that number to increase to more than 40 percent," Centerville Mayor Ron Russell said in a statement.

UTOPIA (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) is a consortium of 11 municipalities, from Tremonton to Payson, that have joined to build the taxpayer-funded fiber-optic network. Customers connected to it can experience download and upload speeds up to 100 times faster than other Internet connections through providers such as Comcast or CenturyLink.


Nine percent of Centerville businesses subscribe to UTOPIA, according to the company.

The build out of Centerville was completed in part with federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In all, $16 million from the federal government, along with $8 million in local bond proceeds, was used to help build the network in Centerville, Layton, Midvale, Murray, Orem and West Valley City.

As a result, those six cities will have 250 miles of new fiber lines connecting about 400 community sites, which include 161 public safety buildings, 39 schools, one library, 55 health-care facilities and 104 government buildings.

Although UTOPIA is making strides to add to its network, the consortium has been deep in financial problems since work began in 2002. The network has a negative net worth of $120 million and has had nine consecutive years of operating losses. Its member cities are obligated to use sales tax revenue to pay for 30-year bonds issued for the network. Salt Lake Tribune

CBRE Reports Increased Construction of Office and Industrial Properties

Completed construction of new industrial buildings in the Salt Lake market was significant in the third quarter while completed office space also made a comeback, according to a report by the Salt Lake City office of CBRE.

“In response to big box demand for larger, more modern space, Salt Lake County has experienced a significant amount of new multi-tenant industrial construction boom,” said Rad Dye, Senior Vice President at CBRE. “In fact, industrial facilities under construction have not dropped below 500,000 square feet since the first quarter of 2011.”

Currently, there is 1.4 million square feet of industrial space under construction, a 41 percent increase compared to 964,000 square feet of space under construction in the second quarter. Two notable industrial buildings completed construction in the third quarter: Rockefeller E building in Salt Lake City and Cookietree Bakeries building in Murray. Both buildings are single-tenant projects. Furthermore, over the last 12 months, 5,000 manufacturing jobs were created, making manufacturing the second largest job producer in Utah, according to the August jobs report from the Utah Department of Workforce Services. On the office front, completed office properties (multi-tenant over 20,000 square feet) made a significant comeback. Roughly 268,000 square feet of office space was completed in the third quarter up from 104,000 square feet completed in the previous quarter. Two multi-tenant office buildings were completed in the third quarter: Old Mill Corporate Center IV in Cottonwood Heights and Building One at The Interchange in Draper.

A significant amount of office construction is taking place in Lehi. Although not technically in the boundaries of the Salt Lake office market, the area’s proximity to Salt Lake County is a big draw for companies wanting to tap the labor markets of both Utah and Salt Lake counties. Several hundred thousand square feet of office space is underway including two buildings at Thanksgiving Point and the new Traverse Ridge project. Utah Policy

Housing Report Shows Nation Still Down Over 2008

The housing markets in Utah's most populous counties have endured four challenging years, according to a new report.

Based on five key metrics related to the nation's housing market — average home price, unemployment rate, foreclosure inventory, foreclosure starts and share of distressed sales — the U.S. housing market comes out worse off than it was four years ago, with a several Utah counties hit especially hard.

The 2012 Election Housing Report showed that the average price of a residential property nationwide has decreased 20 percent during the past four years — leaving more than 12 million homeowners owing more than their property is worth, according to RealtyTrac, a market research firm based in Irvine, Calif.

What that numbers don't reflect is the upward trend during the past year in the housing market and the peak periods of foreclosure which kept numbers low during the past few years.

All six Beehive State counties in the report saw unemployment rates nearly double or exceed that amount, from at least 3 percent in 2008 to 6 percent or greater in 2012, while four counties saw the volume of foreclosure starts jump more than double during the period.

But the Utah unemployment rate continues to be better than the national average and the growth in exports also points to an economy on the rebound.

Despite the report's poor numbers, the state's housing market has steadily improved during the past year, and Utah has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in the country — more than 25 percent below the national rate of 7.8 percent.

Daren Blomquist, vice president of marketing for RealtyTrac, said the foreclosure market is improving nationwide, which bodes well for Utah and most other states.

However, the positives of lower foreclosure inventory and fewer foreclosure starts are outweighed by the negatives of lower home prices, higher unemployment and a higher share of distressed sales, the report stated.

Nationwide, in the 919 counties with data available for all five metrics, 580 (65 percent) showed at least three out of the five key metrics worse off than four years ago, while in 315 counties (35 percent) at least three of the five key metrics were better off than four years ago. Deseret News

Outlets at Traverse Mountain Release Official List of Retailers, Announce Grand Opening

Utah and Salt Lake Counties are about to elevate their shopping experience like never before. With construction on schedule and tenant leases being signed daily, Outlets at Traverse Mountain is on track to open Phase 1 with over 40 stores across 225,000 square feet of retail heaven on November 16, 2012.

The official store roster to date includes the new-to-market retailers Le Creuset (cookware), GoLite (high-end outdoor apparel and gear), and Under Armour (sports clothing). Furthermore, this location will be Under Armour’s 100th store in the United States.

Additional confirmed tenants are Banana Republic Factory Store, Calvin Klein, Carter’s Babies & Kids, Chico’s, Children’s Place, Clarks Bostonian Outlet, Coach, Columbia Sportswear, Famous Footwear Outlet, G.H. Bass, Gap Outlet, Gold Toe, Gymboree Outlet, IZOD, J Crew Factory, Johnny Rockets, Journeys, Kitchen Collection, Lane Bryant, Levi’s Outlet Store, Loft Outlet, Maurices, Men’s Wearhouse Outlet, Michael Kors, Nike Factory Store, OshKosh B’Gosh, Perfumania, Polo Ralph Lauren Factory Store, Pro Image Sports, Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, Samsonite Company Store, Skechers, Tommy Hilfiger, Ultra Diamond, Van Heusen, Vans Outlet, Wilsons Leather, and Zumiez.

Special performances and activities are planned throughout the entire weekend of November 16th. Utah Pulse