County lends a hand

Salt Lake County has launched a new initiative it says will boost its efforts to recruit, nurture and grow businesses.

"Quality business development starts at home," Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said during a program unveiling Thursday. "But one of the things we realized in trying to accomplish our goal of helping existing businesses is that the county doesn't have all the resources. . . . Our program is designed to gather current resources and place them in a central location that is easy to find and navigate."

The "Up Grade: Business on the Next Level" program brings together resources, information and some money to a central source, a Web site: www.upgrade.slco.org.

The site includes links to the U.S. Small Business Administration, Utah's Division of Workforce Services, various chambers of commerce and municipal economic development programs, banks and others. And, it offers information and tips to help companies locate to Utah, start up and grow, and take advantage of government procurement contracts and other opportunities.

"Our Web site lists resources for helping businesses on all levels," Corroon said.

Stan Nakano, Utah district director for the SBA, applauded the program and said it will complement existing programs in place at the national, state and municipal levels.

This past year, SBA's Utah office approved 2,012 loans for $314 million, Nakano said. A record number of loans were approved for minority- and women-owned businesses.

"Salt Lake County represented about 38 percent of our loan volume by numbers, and about 43 percent by dollars," Nakano said. "We believe that a spirit of cooperation, and working collaboratively through Up Grade, we can increase our numbers and reach out to more small businesses in Salt Lake County."

Up Grade is overseen by the county's three-person economic development staff and will rely heavily on its partners, such as Salt Lake Community College, which implements small-business development centers, said Dale Carpenter, the county's economic development director.

"We don't see ourselves as an army going out to help small businesses, because we aren't," he said. "But what a marvel our Web site will be. As much as anything, it's a formalized program, which has never existed at a municipal economic development level, to say, 'We recognize that small business is our growth engine.'

"I've had the opportunity to work in economic development off and on for about 30 years, and we always talk about the importance of small business," he said Thursday. "But rarely have I seen a formal program like the one the mayor will introduce today."