Unfortunately, there have been a number of misconceptions and/or rumors circulating concerning Action Target and its location in the Dixon neighborhood. We appreciate those who have sought the truth as well as those who have been supportive within the neighborhood.
Brief History:
Like so many great businesses, Action Target began in the garages and basements of its young entrepreneurial founders. As the struggling company slowly began to grow, its owners began to search for a more suitable commercial location. Lacking the money to do anything else, they were able to find a distressed property, zoned for manufacturing, on which they could begin to build.
Much of the new site had been previously used as an automobile wrecking yard and was in terrible shape. But Action Target improved it, cleaned it up, and gradually began to build new buildings as its growth would allow. Unfortunately poor land use planning many years prior had placed manufacturing and residential zones next to each other and had not allowed ample road access into the manufacturing zone. A more responsible zoning plan would have designed a buffer zone to better protect homes and neighborhoods in the area.
As Action Target grew, one immediate neighbor began to resent the impact she felt from her proximity to the company. So she gathered a small group together and began an effort to force the company out of the neighborhood. Throughout this process, every imaginable City, State and Federal agency was called in to investigate alleged violations by Action Target. All resulting studies and testing proved in favor of Action Target and yet hundreds of thousands of otherwise job-creating dollars had been lost and Action Target's reputation within the community had been damaged as well. To this day, certain unfounded (any many outrageous) rumors continue to circulate.
Action Target worked independently and together with the City, trying to address the concerns raised by the neighborhood. But it sometimes seemed that the more we tried to help, the more people complained. Nevertheless, we didn't give up. It has been a slow, difficult and expensive process. But this is what Action Target has done:
- We determined to move the company out of the Dixon neighborhood and began immediately the long process of locating a new site.
- We began to make changes to improve things for the neighborhood in the interim (which we knew would take several years). This included the installation of a taller ventilation stack to reduce any odors in the neighborhood. It included the leasing of a remote warehouse to reduce outside storage at the main facility. It included the re-routing of trucks to avoid heavy traffic on narrow streets. And it included the total reformulation of paints used at the facility to significantly reduce odors.
- We determined that only two of the immediate neighbors were directly impacted by their proximity to the company. We paid to have one of the neighbors relocated to a new home in a quieter neighborhood. And we worked with the City to assist them in purchasing the other neighbor's property.
- We cooperated with the City to assist them in purchasing the Action Target property. This transaction was done at appraised fair-market value and according to publicly established procedures for such a transaction.
- Although in similar situations, the municipality would typically be responsible for all the cost of relocating such a business, Action Target volunteered to shoulder the bulk of the cost, saving the City hundreds of thousands of dollars it might otherwise have had to spend.
- Through this process, neighboring cities came calling, offering rich incentives to bring Action Target jobs and revenues to their cities. But because the owners were committed to the City and its future, they decided to stay in Provo, even through great personal expense, and are now the anchoring company in the Mountain Vista Industrial Park in South East Provo.
- The process of construction in Mountain Vista was also fraught with problems. Although we understood the land to be "shovel ready." It turned out to require hundreds of thousands of dollars of remediation before it would hold the structural loads of a commercial building. Although the City worked to help with this problem, again the bulk of the burden was shouldered by Action Target.
