Community

Everybody here lives twenty minutes from work.

The people at this company coach, sit on boards, run committees, and show up to things on weeknights. Not as a program. They live here.

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community moment
700 × 700
community moment
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community moment
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community moment

First

The town was here before we were.

St. George was a working town for eighty years before this family arrived, and it will keep being one long after all of us. Nothing on this page is a claim about who made it what it is.

What we can say is narrower and easier to check. People who work here serve on local boards, and have for three generations. The company puts money and time into a few institutions it has a long relationship with. And when JMI builds something, the subcontractors, suppliers, and crews are mostly people who live within a half hour of the site.

A company that only ever takes from a town eventually runs out of town.

Where our people serve

Boards, committees, and the meetings nobody photographs.

These are organizations people from JMI have given time to across three generations. Some of it goes back further than the buildings do.

St. George Chamber of Commerce

Including a term as president

Washington County Economic Development Council

Bringing employers to the county

St. George City Council

An elected term in city government

Rotary Club of St. George

Including two past presidents

Southern Utah Home Builders Association

The trade body for residential construction here

Utah Tech University Alumni Association Board

Formerly the Dixie State University board

St. George Exchange Club

Service work across the county

Leadership Dixie

The county's community leadership program [[NEEDED: confirm this is the adult Leadership Dixie program and not the separate Leadership Dixie Academy for high school students]]

Dixie Development

Formed by local business leaders to bring industry to the area [[NEEDED: confirm this organization is still active and still under this name]]

Several of these were held by people who have since retired. The list is here because the habit is older than any one person at the company.

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Utah Tech campus, or a JMI person at a university event
Cover crop, subject centered

The long one

Sixty years with the university.

The school on the hill has been Dixie Junior College, Dixie College, Dixie State, and now Utah Tech University. Through every one of those names, people from this company have given it money, time, and work.

The reason is not complicated. A town this size either grows people who can do skilled work or imports them. Every tradesperson, accountant, and manager that campus turns out is somebody who does not have to move away to find a career, and several of them end up working here.

[[NEEDED: one specific contribution. A building, a scholarship, a program, an endowment. One concrete example is more persuasive than the whole paragraph above it]]

Economic development

Some of the community work looks like a business decision.

The line between the two gets thin in a county this size. Three examples where the work served the area as much as the company.

Fort Pierce Industrial Park

Manufacturers were calling Washington County and there was nowhere zoned to put them. Getting fifteen hundred acres entitled and serviced gave the county something to offer employers who would otherwise have gone elsewhere.

Space for people starting out

A retail center is a row of small businesses. Most of the tenants in a JMI property are local operators on their first or second location, and the leasing decisions reflect that.

Work that stays local

The trades on a JMI project live here. Money spent on a building recirculates through the same county instead of leaving with an out of state contractor.

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A tenant business open and trading in a JMI center

The ordinary version

Most of it is not charity.

The community work that adds up is rarely the part with a photograph attached. It looks like ordinary decisions made in favor of people who live here.

  • Trades and suppliers hired locally, project after project
  • Space leased to first-location businesses who cannot show five years of financials
  • A grand opening promoted because a new tenant needs the traffic
  • Buildings maintained rather than run down and sold on
  • People hired from the campus down the road
Landscape across Washington County, Utah

Say hello

If we can help with something local, ask.