Utah’s technology industry is booming — but its economic benefits have largely been outside the state’s capital city, with companies gravitating instead to cities like Lehi and others along the Interstate 15 corridor in an area known as Silicon Slopes.
Several of the eight candidates for Salt Lake City mayor said they want to change that, promising at a mayoral forum hosted by Silicon Slopes leaders on Tuesday that they would work, if elected, to cultivate economic development in the tech sector.
“Part of the reason we are disconnected [from tech] is we always have a tendency to do what we’ve always done; we lack imagination,” argued David Ibarra, who owns several businesses both locally and internationally.