Southern Utah.

• Position: Regional Report - Interview

Hit hard by the construction downturn, Southern Utah is working to diversify its economy and provide opportunities for its educated workforce. With a new airport and several construction projects in the pipeline, the future is looking brighter for Utah's Dixie.

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We'd like to give a special thank you to Scott Hirschi, director of the Washington County Economic Development Council, for moderating the discussion and to Jones Waldo for hosting the event.

Where are we economically, and what do you foresee over the next 12 to 18 months?

WOOD: In the past 12 months, we have seen a number of local expansions and a relocation of a company--Insituform Technologies--out of the San Francisco Bay area. We've had a number of site visits. Most of them have wanted to wait. They've decided they'd rather be more conservative than aggressive. But I see people finally taking some steps in the expansion process because they've spent the last 12 or 18 months looking, making sure the time is right.

WALTER: For the first time in a couple of years, we have some good momentum. Companies are feeling like there's some opportunity to move out of this particular economic environment, and as a result, we're seeing quite a bit of activity.

We are very excited about the Lighthouse announcement. And 160 jobs and an 88,000-square-foot industrial building that has been on the market for three years is now occupied, and that's a big deal. We've seen, on a smaller scale, two or three other significant leases done in the last couple of months, which is more than we've had in the last two and a half years.

To have some activity and some life in our industrial market, it represents job growth, it represents absorption. It feels like we're turning a corner in our economic cycle.

In light of the Great Recession, how is your business doing today? What are you doing differently today than what you were doing a few years ago--and is it working?

PETERSON: We've taken the opportunity to figure out what we used to ignore as far as inefficiencies and problems, and really gotten better at manufacturing more effectively, keeping our costs down, not wasting as much labor as we used to. As a result, we've been able to lower our prices a little bit, and that's resulted in us actually being able to hire about 20 additional employees over the last six months, which represents about 50 percent of our manufacturing workforce.

WADE: We've gone through the most tumultuous period of time in the last two years in the history of the auto industry. We had about 18,500 auto dealers, and now we're down in the 17,000 range. We just went back to the basics. It was surprising what we could do with fewer people. We've worked hard on absorption and things like that. Our tie to the Las Vegas market has certainly affected us greatly.

When the auto industry is strong, the country is strong, because people buy an automobile with discretionary income. Two years ago, credit dried up to the point where you needed nearly an 800 credit score to buy an automobile, which is unheard of. But credit is coming back into the market, and subprime is coming back into the market.

PIKE: A lot of people think health care is pretty recession proof, but that's not the case, especially when it comes to elective things, like knee surgeries and other outpatient things. We definitely saw a downturn, from 2008 to 2009 in particular.

During this difficult time, we already have a big project underway, about a $60 million project for an outpatient building. Our industry is just proceeding as best we can and trying to take advantage of our best resource, which is our educated workforce in this area. We have over 2,100 employees, and we haven't had to lay off. We haven't hired as much, but that's starting to return a little bit more now too.

Three years ago, the construction industry represented about 15 percent of the greater St. George economy. If you added all of the supporting industries, well over a third of our local economy was somehow tied to construction. Where do you think that industry is today, and where do you see it going in the next couple of years?

WATTS: For the past 30 months, we haven't had one private inquiry. It's been pretty tough business. We appreciate the universities and the public sector for what they've done to keep us all rolling, and some of that is going to be running a little slow with governmental spending coming to a halt. It's going to be a little tough the next eight months, but hopefully things will start picking up again.

NOBIS: Right now, from the numbers I've looked at, there's a little over 6,900 improved lots in the area. So with the absorption rates, you're looking at about 120 closings right now per month. I can see 2011 being pretty...