One of Salt Lake County's biggest office parks, The Pointe, is under construction in Draper. The complex is expected to encompass roughly 600,000 square feet of premium office space, which is more than downtown Salt Lake City's tallest office tower — the Wells Fargo Center — and larger than other suburban office centers like the Cottonwood Corporate Center.

"We believe that the market is desirable enough that it more than offsets these issues that were raised today," Baird said. "We have had double-digit growth on an annual basis for close to the last 15 years."

William Palmer, a BYU student majoring in finance who worked on the report, said there were many situations in which city staff could not or would not answer simple questions regarding permit fees.

"South Jordan said, 'Our fees are negotiable,"' Palmer said. "Which means, depending on what you're bringing in here, we're going to be willing to work with you more."

Horst agrees that the city's impact fees are negotiable.

"The truth is there is not a city probably in the country that if an office or retailer comes in that the cities aren't going to negotiate with them," Horst said. "If they are, for instance, a million-square-feet retail center that we are going to get a lot of sales tax, then we can help pay some of the infrastructure through sales tax."

Isaac Alldredge, also a BYU student who gathered information from cities, said most of the municipalities were cooperative.

"The one exception was South Jordan," said Alldredge, who added that after four visits and several weeks of verifying data, South Jordan's development fees as listed in the report are the "most accurate of all the municipalities."

But South Jordan officials aren't buying it.

"If you come and look at our city, we are growing fast-paced," Horst said. "Why does everybody keep knocking on our door wanting to come in if the fees are scaring them away? We've never charged a full set of fees in I don't know how long."

---

E-mail: danderton@desnews.com