Provo pursues win-win deal

PROVO — For years, frustrated neighbors on Provo's west side have wanted a successful but sometimes noisy and smelly business to go away.

Meanwhile, over on the east side, a drive to sell lots in the city's new business park stalled after a major company backed out of an incentive-laden deal.

Provo leaders now hope they can solve both problems by spending $3.3 million.

The City Council has authorized Mayor Lewis Billings to buy the property of gun-range manufacturer Action Target on the west side for $2.65 million and pay another $650,000 to relocate the company to the Mountain Vista Business Park on the east side.

Mountain Vista is a new name for an area known for decades as Ironton, the contaminated former site of a U.S. Steel plant vacant for 45 years.

Now cleaned up and ready for business, Ironton has been repackaged as Mountain Vista Business Park, and lots are being marketed to companies by real-estate experts hired by the city.

For that and other reasons, the prospect of a multimillion-dollar deal to move Action Target, 1281 W. 220 North, is considered a win-win-win proposition by neighbors, most city leaders and the company.

• Residents in the Dixon neighborhood are holding their breath hoping the deal is finalized. They have tussled with the business for five years over issues such as noise, idling trucks and industrial paint fumes that made some neighbors feel ill, though the Utah Division of Environmental Quality gave the company a clean bill of health.

  "Everybody is really, really happy," resident Judy Kelsch said. "It will be a really great thing for the neighborhood and the company to have them relocate."

• The City Council voted 6-1 for the deal. City leaders believe the plan would not only jumpstart the business park and quell one neighborhood's concerns but allow the city to push 200 North through the Action Target property to Independence Avenue and create a physical buffer between the residential area and land zoned for light industrial use.

The city also is in negotiations to sell some of Action Target's land on the west side to Neighborhood Housing Services for $1 million. NHS would build homes in the area, further bolstering one of Provo's central Pioneer neighborhoods.

Additionally, the city would sell land to Jones Paint and Glass for more than $500,000.

One councilmember disapproved during a meeting earlier this month.

"The price is too high for me," Steve Turley said, "to purchase land for $2.6 million, then the relocation for $650,000 for a total price of $3.3 million and then only recover $1.5 million. While I respect some of the benefits that will come from it, the price is too high."