CONSTRUCTION: UTAH CONSTRUCTION STAYS RESILIENT--AND OPTIMISTIC ABOUT 2021.

• Author: Cigana, Dennis

IN WHAT MAY HAVE BEEN the greatest possible test of Utah's economic resilience, the Beehive State showed in 2020 that it Is still one of the best places in America to do business, build and foster growth.

The world unmistakably changed in early 2020, and the realities of commercial real estate changed with it. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a tidal wave of change not only in Utahns' day-to-day lives, but also in the overall landscape of commercial construction and real estate development throughout the state.

While Utah builders and developers were most certainly not spared from some tough challenges brought on by the pandemic, the commercial real estate industry has been fortunate to identify several avenues for new building projects, find creative solutions amid a changed economic outlook, and secure opportunities for continued prosperity in the state.

And despite the unpredictability of the past year, 202T continues to look more and more like it presents a viable path back to pre-pandemic market activity. Utah's strong growth projections and the opportunity zone continue to attract interest from both instate and out-of-state developers; this holds particularly true in the major population centers along the Wasatch Front.

The pandemic has created new ways of doing business, and construction sites have remained open as builders have implemented enhanced protection measures for onsite employees. Keeping jobsite employees safe from the coronavirus has become an all-consuming priority for builders statewide, riveting the attention of an industry that knows a thing or two about how to enforce strict rules about workplace safety and create a culture of accountability to those rules.

Generally, larger projects that take up to a year to design and several years to build continue to move forward in the design phase with developers banking on a thorough rebound in Utah's economy by the time their project hits the market.

There have undoubtedly been challenges putting the resilience of Utah's commercial real estate industry to the test. Some near-future projects have eased in progressing to market, some clients have pushed back groundbreakings or kept projects in the design process longer as a wait-and-see approach to the pandemic, and delayed or postponed projects have not been uncommon for Utah contractors in 2020. Still, overall we have seen an encouraging flow of projects in the bidding stage as public and private markets (including those funded by the state...