Weber County officials mulling expansion of county's inland port area around Ogden airport

OGDEN — Weber County authorities want to expand the inland port project area in the county to include 80-plus acres adjacent to Ogden-Hinckley Airport for potential use by defense contractors and other manufacturing operations.

"It really is a good faith effort in our vision to help support Ogden city's airport project grow and be successful," said Stephanie Russell, the Weber County economic development director. Ogden officials have lofty aspirations to upgrade the Ogden airport, promote its use and foster development in and around the city-owned facility.

Developers are potentially interested in using part of the unincorporated land around the airport, Russell said, and folding it into the expansive West Weber Inland Port Project Area in the western reaches of the county might be a mechanism to prod the effort forward. The 9,000-acre inland port area was created in 2024 within the framework of the Utah Inland Port Authority, a state entity formed to promote economic development through its various project areas around Utah.

"The inland port is a finance mechanism, and that's what we utilize the inland port for," she said. Collaborating with the state via creation of inland port project areas helps with business recruitment and expansion, she said, in part through availability of funding akin to tax-increment financing that can be tapped for public infrastructure development in partnership with private developers.

The potential plan on the unincorporated land around the Ogden airport is still preliminary and Russell didn't have additional details. Weber County commissioners were to have considered a measure on Tuesday to start the process to fold the property into the inland port project area, but they held off on action as Russell fine-tunes the proposal.

At any rate, the resolution the county officials were to have considered speaks optimistically about the potential.

The acreage could "support aerospace manufacturing, defense contractors, aircraft maintenance and repair operations, drone and unmanned aircraft system companies, aviation logistics, advanced manufacturing and other employment-generating uses" that benefit from proximity to facilities like the airport and Hill Air Force Base, it reads. Data center development isn't envisioned on the land and Russell emphasized that the land isn't suited for such development.

Russell hopes the measure in the works is ready for consideration by county commissioners later this month. It would be a formal request for Utah Inland Port Authority officials to consider expanding the Weber County project area to include the additional 80-plus acres of land around the airport and some other parcels elsewhere. If and when approved, state inland port officials would then have to take up the issue.

Kaitlin Felsted, spokeswoman for the Utah Inland Port Authority, said Weber County officials have been in contact with port authority representatives about the plans.

"A resolution from the county to amend the project area still involves internal vetting and controls with UIPA and a final UIPA Board approval in a public meeting. We do not begin those processes until a community resolution has been passed," she said.

That said, airports figure in the inland port mission of promoting transportation logistics, and she spoke favorably of the potential.

"The Ogden-Hinkley Airport is a critical regional asset, and if we can support the infrastructure and development needs near the airport, we see that as part of our mandate from the Legislature," she said. "There's also rail infrastructure nearby that we'd like to see better utilized where possible."