Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Feasibility Studies, Calibrated to Utah

MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study consultants that produces feasibility studies for Utah projects where the underwriting questions reach beyond the standard checklist. The Great Salt Lake crisis, the 2034 Winter Olympics pipeline, the Silicon Slopes cascade, the Utah Inland Port Authority project areas, federal land coverage approaching two-thirds of the state, and the Deer Valley East Village build-out all reshape how a Utah deal pencils. Every engagement is calibrated to the project address, the program of record, and the specific lender or CDC carrying the deal.

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Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Delivery in 9 to 16 business days. A complimentary preliminary Utah market overview within one business day of submission.

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1. Why Utah Demands a Different Class of Feasibility Study

Utah is one of the most consistently high-growth state economies in the United States, and the reasons run deeper than population. The state's resident population reached approximately 3.55 million by mid-2025, with year-over-year growth of 1.3 percent ranking Utah the fifth-fastest-growing state in percentage terms behind only South Carolina, Idaho, North Carolina, and Texas. Long-term Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute projections call for Utah to reach 5.6 million residents by 2065, an absolute gain equivalent to adding the entire current population of Idaho.

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Three structural conditions converge to make Utah feasibility studies materially different from work in other Mountain West states. First, the 2034 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, formally awarded to Salt Lake City at the 142nd IOC Session in Paris on July 24, 2024, are projected to generate $6.6 billion in economic output and 42,000 job-years of employment, with permanent venue investment intentionally minimized at approximately $31.2 million plus $206.2 million in temporary infrastructure under a privately funded $4.0 billion operating budget. Second, the Silicon Slopes corridor between Lehi and Pleasant Grove now anchors more than 1,000 technology firms including Adobe, Qualtrics, Domo, Lucid Software, Vivint, Ancestry, BambooHR, and Podium, alongside operating campuses for Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, Google, and Micron. Third, the regulatory and natural-resource stack is unlike any other state. The Great Salt Lake at 4,191 feet sits more than seven feet below the 4,198-foot healthy-lake target the state has committed to restore by 2034, and roughly 63 to 68 percent of Utah's surface area is federally owned, the second-highest share in the lower forty-eight after Nevada.

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2. Utah Capital Markets at a Glance

Utah punches above its weight in federal small-business credit. Although the state ranks only twenty-eighth in absolute dollar volume, it consistently ranks among the top three to four states nationally in per-capita SBA approval activity, with combined SBA 7(a) and SBA 504 production running at roughly $1.5 to $2.0 billion in annual originations across the Wasatch Front and Washington County. Mountain West Small Business Finance, headquartered in Salt Lake City and operating since 1981, has originated more than 3,000 504 loans aggregating in excess of $2.5 billion of fixed-asset capital, ranking it the dominant CDC across the Intermountain West.

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On the USDA side, the Utah State Office at the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building in downtown Salt Lake City covers Business and Industry, Community Facilities, and REAP deal flow through field offices in North Logan, Vernal, Richfield, Cedar City, and Ephraim. USDA eligibility is unusually broad in Utah because most counties outside the four Wasatch Front counties and Washington County contain population centers under the 50,000 USDA threshold. The questions that determine whether a Utah deal closes are rarely about loan structure. They are about water, the Olympic premium, federal-land overlay, UIPA tax-increment exposure, and Silicon Slopes demand cascade. That is what our work answers.

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3. Salt Lake City: Hospitality, Industrial, and the Olympic Pipeline

Salt Lake City has emerged as one of the most structurally undersupplied second-tier convention markets in the country. The October 2022 opening of the 700-room, 26-story Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City convention headquarters hotel, with 60,000 square feet of meeting space and a 23,000-square-foot Regency Ballroom directly connected to the Salt Palace Convention Center, marked the city's arrival as a serious group destination. Lodging Analytics Research & Consulting placed Salt Lake City among the top markets nationwide for hotel value change in 2025, alongside Puerto Rico, Charlotte, New Orleans, and Orlando. The 2034 Organizing Committee has secured commitments for approximately 18,000 of the 21,000 hotel rooms required for the Games, with roughly 3,000 still under negotiation as of early 2026.

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The Salt Lake County industrial market crossed 250 million square feet by year-end 2025, holding overall vacancy steady at 7.9 percent in Q1 2026 with monthly net asking rents stabilized at $0.80 to $0.81 per square foot triple net (Cushman & Wakefield). More than 8.5 million square feet of new warehouse and distribution product delivered between early 2024 and year-end 2025. Northern Utah industrial vacancy remained tightest in the state at 3.1 percent in Q1 2026 (Davis and Weber counties), supported by Hill Air Force Base demand and the Sentinel ICBM program build-out at Northrop Grumman's Roy Innovation Center. Salt Lake's Northwest Quadrant submarket is anchored by the Utah Inland Port Authority's flagship 16,000-acre project area, with approximately 1.9 million square feet of new construction active by late 2024.

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Utah has emerged as one of the fastest-growing hyperscale and colocation data center markets in the Mountain West, propelled by sub-six-cent industrial power rates on Rocky Mountain Power Schedule 9, the state's data-center sales-tax exemption on equipment, high-altitude cold-desert ambient cooling, and four major fiber long-haul routes meeting at Salt Lake. The Meta Eagle Mountain Campus is being built to roughly 4.5 million square feet at full build with $1.5 billion in invested capital, powered entirely by net-new renewable generation through Rocky Mountain Power's Schedule 34 tariff. Novva Data Centers' West Jordan flagship is a 100-acre, 1.5 million square foot, 180 MW four-phase campus financed through a $2 billion JPMorgan Chase and Starwood Property Trust loan announced in 2024. The NSA Utah Data Center at Bluffdale, QTS Eagle Mountain, Aligned, STACK Infrastructure, and Tonaquint at St. George round out the cluster.

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Salt Lake multifamily sits mid-correction. Developers delivered 7,133 units year-to-date through August 2025 (a 5.3 percent stock increase) with another 12,573 units underway per Yardi Matrix; sales reached approximately $260 million through August at $265,206 per unit. CBRE and Wadsworth reads placed Salt Lake County total vacancy at the high end of the post-2014 range near 7 to 8 percent, with stabilized assets at 3.0 to 3.7 percent. The structural undersupply of affordable housing remains acute: more than 88 percent of residential land in Salt Lake County is zoned for single-family use, and a Salt Lake mortgage payment now runs roughly 170 percent of equivalent rent.

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4. Utah County, Northern Utah, and the St. George Surge

Utah County added 15,914 residents in the year ending mid-2025, more than any other county in the state, accounting for roughly 36 percent of statewide growth. The county is propelled by Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University (the latter the largest Utah higher-education institution by enrollment) plus the Lehi, American Fork, and Pleasant Grove tech corridor along I-15. Lehi is now Utah's fastest-growing city in absolute terms, and Eagle Mountain is projected to surpass 200,000 residents by 2060. Adobe's approximately 442,000 square foot Lehi campus anchors the technology cluster, supported by Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, Google, Domo, Qualtrics, Vivint, Lucid Software, Ancestry, BambooHR, MX Technologies, and Podium.

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The Ogden-Clearfield MSA is anchored by Hill Air Force Base, Utah's largest single-site employer with approximately 27,000 military, civilian, and contract personnel and $12.76 billion in total annual economic impact. Hill is the U.S. Air Force's only depot-maintenance facility for the F-35A Lightning II, and Northrop Grumman is constructing the Roy Innovation Center adjacent to the base as headquarters for the Sentinel ICBM program with a lifecycle value of approximately $141 billion. Utah's defense industry directly and indirectly supported more than 173,000 jobs and contributed an estimated $22.2 billion to state GDP in 2023, or 7.8 percent of the state economy.

Washington County's growth profile is the most dramatic in Utah. The St. George MSA was the eighth-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States between 2024 and 2025 at 2.5 percent, and the City of St. George reached approximately 111,400 residents in 2026, having grown 16 percent since the 2020 Census. Demand drivers cluster around three pillars: active-adult and retiree migration from California, Nevada, and the Pacific Northwest; Zion National Park gateway tourism (Zion received approximately 4.6 million visits in 2023, the third-most-visited national park); and a rapidly expanding healthcare and education economy anchored by Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital. USDA rural-eligibility coverage extends across most of Washington County and all of Iron, Beaver, Kane, Garfield, and San Juan counties, supporting deal flow on hospitality, healthcare, and agribusiness assets in the southern Utah corridor.

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5. Park City, Deer Valley, and the 2034 Olympic Pipeline

Summit County and the Park City and Deer Valley resort complex anchor Utah's luxury hospitality and second-home markets. The defining capital event of the decade is the Deer Valley East Village, a public-private partnership between Extell Development Company and Alterra Mountain Company representing the largest North American ski-resort expansion in more than forty years. At full build the East Village will add 3,700-plus acres of skiable terrain, sixteen new chairlifts including a new ten-passenger gondola, and approximately one hundred new ski runs across South Peak, Park Peak, Big Dutch, Pioche, and Hail Mountains. The expansion more than doubles Deer Valley's skiable footprint to roughly 5,726 acres served by 37 chairlifts.

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The base village will deliver more than 800 hotel keys, nearly 1,700 residential units, 250,000 square feet of retail and commercial space, and 68,000 square feet of recreation facilities. Confirmed flag commitments include the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley (open since the 2024-25 season), Four Seasons Resort and Private Residences Deer Valley (134 keys and 123 residences, scheduled 2027), Waldorf Astoria Deer Valley Resort and Residences (132 keys and 105 residences, scheduled 2028, an Extell, Hilton, AvroKO, and KPF venture), and a 180-key Canopy by Hilton scheduled 2026. The 2034 Olympics will return alpine and freestyle events to Park City Mountain and Deer Valley, with biathlon and cross-country at Soldier Hollow and ski jumping, luge, bobsled, and skeleton at Utah Olympic Park.

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The Sundance Film Festival, long the defining cultural event in Park City and a $132 million annual economic-impact driver, will hold its final Park City edition in January 2026 before relocating to Boulder, Colorado for 2027 under a ten-year contract supported by up to $34 million in Colorado tax credits. The Sundance departure will reshape January room-night demand in Summit County beginning 2027 and is a material assumption that lender-grade hospitality feasibility on Park City assets must now incorporate. The 2034 Organizing Committee has structured the Games around an operating budget of roughly $4.0 billion funded entirely through private sources, with the LDS Church confirming a significant financial donation in February 2026 and donor commitments approaching $150 million by early 2026.

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6. Other Asset Classes We Cover in Utah

Beyond the Tier 1 asset classes above, MMCG produces SBA-, USDA-, and conventional-grade feasibility studies for the full range of commercial property types financed in Utah. The 2034 Olympic pipeline, the Silicon Slopes cascade, USDA-eligible rural geography across most of the state, and Utah's structural housing-affordability gap support deal flow in each of the categories below.

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Self-Storage and RV Storage

Utah ranks among the top five states by RV ownership rate. Self-storage saturation analysis along I-15 between Lehi and Spanish Fork, along U.S. 89 around Heber, and across St. George and Washington City must isolate primary-residence storage from RV and toy storage demand, since HOA covenant restrictions across master-planned communities continue to push large-vehicle storage off-site.

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RV Parks, Glamping, and Short-Term Rentals

Moab (Arches and Canyonlands), Park City, Heber Valley, the Zion gateway corridor (Hurricane, La Verkin, Springdale), and Bear Lake (Garden City) each carry distinct seasonality and ADR profiles for RV park and glamping or short-term-rental feasibility. Utah's STR regulation under HB256 (2025) materially constrains growth in cities exercising new restrictive authority and must be modeled by parcel rather than by metro.

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Healthcare, Assisted Living, and Medical Office

Intermountain Health, headquartered in Salt Lake City and operating 33 hospitals across Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Kansas, and Wyoming with approximately 64,000 employees and $9 billion in net patient revenue, is the dominant healthcare CRE counterparty in the state. University of Utah Health, HCA Mountain Division (St. Mark's, Ogden Regional, Mountain View, Timpanogos, MountainStar Lone Peak), and Steward Health round out the systems landscape. Salt Lake City medical office vacancy was 4.5 percent at Q4 2025. Assisted living demand is structurally driven by retiree migration into Washington County and the Wasatch Front, with USDA Community Facilities often available for non-profit operators across rural-eligible counties.

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Gas Stations, Convenience Stores, Car Washes, and Restaurants

Maverik, Inc., headquartered in Salt Lake City, operates more than 820 stores across twenty states following the 2023 Kum & Go acquisition, making it the largest independent fuel marketer in the Intermountain West and the dominant in-state operator. Gas station, car wash, and restaurant feasibility along the I-15, I-80, and I-70 corridors carries materially above-average SBA 7(a) ticket sizes due to property-plus-business-plus-equipment-plus-working-capital structures common to special-purpose acquisitions.

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Retail, Office, Mixed-Use, and Industrial Flex

Downtown Salt Lake City retail is anchored by the City Creek Center mixed-use development (a 23-acre, $1.5 billion redevelopment opened in 2012 with approximately 700,000 square feet of retail and 1,000-plus residential units), The Gateway, and the planned Power District (Smith Entertainment Group) adjacent to the Delta Center, which is undergoing a $900 million renovation through October 2027. Suburban grocery-anchored retail tracks Smith's (Kroger), Harmons, Macey's, and Walmart Neighborhood Market. Office segmentation by vintage continues to widen: post-2015 product runs at 16.9 percent vacancy, 2000-2014 stock at 23.2 percent, and pre-2000 stock at 28.3 percent.

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Marinas, Wedding Venues, Fitness, and Childcare

Bear Lake (Cisco Beach, Rendezvous Beach), Lake Powell (Bullfrog and Halls Crossing on the Utah side), Strawberry Reservoir, Flaming Gorge, Jordanelle, and Deer Creek anchor marina feasibility across the state. Utah's deep wedding venue and event-facility market is sustained by LDS reception culture across Utah County, Davis County, and Heber Valley. Fitness centers and childcare demand cascades directly off Silicon Slopes employment, with sustained gaps near Lehi, Draper, and Pleasant Grove tech anchors.

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Renewable Energy, Agribusiness, and Mining-Adjacent Service Businesses

Utah hosts large-scale solar deployment in Beaver, Iron, and Millard counties; geothermal at Roosevelt Hot Springs (Cyrq Energy and the Utah FORGE EGS pilot in Beaver County); and the Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES) Delta hydrogen project, supported by a $504 million U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee. The Cache Valley dairy cluster (Schreiber Foods Logan and Smithfield plants, Gossner Foods with approximately 20 percent of U.S. Swiss cheese production, DFA Cache Valley Creamery, and Beaver), Norbest turkeys (Moroni), Utah's number-two national tart-cherry production (Utah County), and Redmond Real Salt (Sevier County) each anchor distinct USDA REAP and Value-Added Producer Grant deal flow. Bingham Canyon Mine (Kennecott Utah Copper, Rio Tinto), Uintah Basin oil and gas, Intrepid Potash at Moab, and Carbon and Emery county coal anchor mining-adjacent service businesses that remain SBA 7(a) and 504 eligible. Cannabis is medical-only in Utah and not eligible for SBA or USDA financing, though MMCG addresses cannabis-adjacent feasibility on a private-capital basis.

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7. What Makes a Utah Feasibility Study Bankable

A bankable Utah feasibility study addresses six state-specific underwriting realities that templated, out-of-state reports routinely miss.

First, the Great Salt Lake. The lake closed 2025 at approximately 4,191 feet above sea level, the third-lowest in the modern record, against a state-committed healthy-lake target of 4,198 feet by the 2034 Olympics. Since settlement the lake has lost approximately 63 percent of its volume and 53 percent of its surface area, with more than 800 square miles of contaminated lakebed currently exposed. Salt Lake City now experiences approximately fifteen dust events per year compared to none fifteen years ago. The crisis materially affects feasibility on Wasatch Front industrial and multifamily projects (PM10 nonattainment risk and dust-mitigation capex), ski-resort hospitality (lake-effect snow accounts for 5 to 10 percent of Wasatch snowfall, and dust-on-snow shortens the typical season by approximately two weeks), and any project depending on Bear River, Jordan River, or Weber River allocations.

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Second, the Colorado River Upper Basin. Utah's 1922 Compact obligations remain a binding constraint on St. George, Moab, and Uintah Basin development; the river has lost roughly 20 percent of historical flow over the past two decades. The Lake Powell Pipeline, a proposed 140-mile, 86,000-acre-foot diversion to St. George, was effectively shelved in late 2022 after six other Basin states threatened legal action.

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Third, federal land. The federal government owns approximately 63 to 68 percent of Utah, with the Bureau of Land Management controlling roughly 22.8 million acres, the U.S. Forest Service approximately 8 million additional acres, and the National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Department of Defense holding the balance. The Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) holds approximately 3.4 million acres of state trust land and is a material seller, lessor, and joint-venture partner in renewable energy, mining, oil and gas, and master-planned community development.

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Fourth, the Utah Inland Port Authority. UIPA's twelve project areas covering approximately 95,000 acres deploy tax-increment financing through public infrastructure districts, reimbursing qualifying projects for infrastructure, environmental remediation, and certain horizontal costs. Lender-grade industrial feasibility in UIPA jurisdictional areas explicitly models TIF reimbursement scenarios against the base case, which materially affects yield-on-cost and stabilized cap rates.

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Fifth, the 2034 Olympic premium. The Games drive differential demand patterns through the next decade. Park City and Deer Valley hospitality, Wasatch Front limited-service hotels along I-15, Heber and Wasatch County secondary-home markets, and West Valley City assets each carry an Olympic premium that lender-grade studies must isolate from organic Wasatch growth using a base-case-plus-event-overlay methodology.

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Sixth, the LDS Church economic footprint. Property Reserve Inc., the Church's commercial real estate arm, is one of the largest landowners in downtown Salt Lake City, anchored by City Creek Center and the multi-billion-dollar Temple Square redevelopment ongoing through approximately 2026. The Brigham Young University system, the Provo Missionary Training Center (the largest in the world), and the Church's announced February 2026 financial donation to the 2034 Organizing Committee further consolidate its role in downtown SLC and Provo CRE underwriting.

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8. How MMCG Engages with Utah Sponsors and Lenders

MMCG delivers Utah feasibility studies in 9 to 16 business days from data receipt, with a complimentary preliminary market overview within one business day of submission. Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Reports are formatted for SBA, CDC, USDA, and conventional lender file submission and incorporate the analytical layers Utah credit committees expect, including Great Salt Lake exposure analysis, federal-land overlay, UIPA tax-increment scenario modeling where applicable, the Olympic premium isolation framework, and the LDS-economy footprint where relevant to downtown Salt Lake City and Provo deals.

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Engagements typically begin with the project address, asset class, capital stack, and the specific lender or Certified Development Company carrying the deal. From there, MMCG calibrates scope to the program of record, whether SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry, REAP, or Community Facilities. ​

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START YOUR UTAH ENGAGEMENT

Send the project address. Receive a free Utah market overview within one business day.

Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Delivery in 9 to 16 business days.

Email info@mmcginvest.com or call (628) 225-1110. Book a 30-minute meeting.

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Utah Cities and Counties Served

Salt Lake City, West Valley City, Provo, Orem, Lehi, Sandy, Murray, West Jordan, South Jordan, Riverton, Draper, Cottonwood Heights, Holladay, Millcreek, Taylorsville, Midvale, Magna, Tooele, Ogden, Layton, Clearfield, Roy, Syracuse, Kaysville, Farmington, Bountiful, Centerville, Woods Cross, Logan, Brigham City, Tremonton, Park City, Heber City, American Fork, Pleasant Grove, Lindon, Saratoga Springs, Eagle Mountain, Spanish Fork, Springville, Payson, Santaquin, Vernal, Roosevelt, Price, Moab, Richfield, Cedar City, Hurricane, Washington, St. George, Santa Clara, Ivins, Bluffdale, Herriman. Counties: Beaver, Box Elder, Cache, Carbon, Daggett, Davis, Duchesne, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Iron, Juab, Kane, Millard, Morgan, Piute, Rich, Salt Lake, San Juan, Sanpete, Sevier, Summit, Tooele, Uintah, Utah, Wasatch, Washington, Wayne, Weber.