Weren’t We Trying to Diversify our Local Economy?

Coming out of the Great Recession, we heard a lot about diversifying our local economy. We had to make sure that tourism wasn’t our driving force. We needed other businesses. We moved forward with ideas like the Boyer Tech Park, in order to bring Hi Tech jobs to Park City.

Yet 2 years later we don’t really hear about that anymore. We hear about traffic… and Vail… and growth… and more growth. However, we don’t hear much, if anything, about economic diversification.

Where did that go? Do we care about it anymore? Did Vail change everything? Does traffic outweigh diversification? Will we feel the same when the next recession hits? Did we give up?

It just seems strange and makes us wonder if today’s “hot buttons” will vanish in due time. If Utah doesn’t grow as much as forecasted for two to three years, will all our conversations about growth disappear into the ether? Who knows.

But we do still wonder if we should be figuring out how to bring 100s of manufacturing jobs to the Basin and not necessarily where “Trader Joe’s” should go. We guess only time will tell if we have focused on the right things.