Despite woeful economic news on the national level, most Tooele County business people are optimistic about their business in the months ahead.

Greg Hargis, human resources manager for Wal-Mart Supercenter in Tooele, said his store’s overall business remains strong despite a retail slowdown nationwide, and he expects local sales to hold steady over the next six months. In fact, his concerns for the future were more about increasing competition than a declining economy.

“The only thing I can think of that might hurt us a little bit and shake things up is Big 5 Sporting Goods and Sears coming into town,” Hargis said. “However, we have pretty much everything here in just this one store, and when you think about it, everyone in town shops at Wal-Mart.”

Hargis said his store has been helped by more people shopping locally as gas prices rise.

“The locals are still shopping here and we’re getting more people who used to go into Salt Lake for their needs, but the reason sales haven’t increased majorly is because people are spending less when they shop,” he said.

Steve Widerburg, store supervisor for Home Depot in Tooele, said he’s confident about sales in the months ahead after a strong summer season.

“We ended up at 99 percent for our projected sales plan, which is what the Home Depot corporation expected our sales to be for the summer,” he said. “Sales at Tooele’s Home Depot came out above the national company trend, which was at about 92 or 93 percent. We weren’t killing like we were for the first few years we were open, but at 99 percent I’d say we still did pretty well. I think it’s because we’re living in a unique market, where our economy is slightly above the national average.”

Like Hargis, Widerburg said a strong local labor market is also helping business.

“I think that because we’re one of the bigger retailers in the area and gas prices are still high, more people are looking to get away from the Salt Lake commute and get a job in Tooele,” Widerburg said.

Officials from several industrial operations in the county as also optimistic about local prospects.

Utah Fabrication controller Kerstin Topham said she expects to double her steel fabrication business in the Utah Industrial Depot in the next six months.

“We are growing like crazy here, and we can’t keep up with all the work or find enough employees,” she said. “We do a lot of work on mines in the Mountain West region, and some of the things we’re still working on are big capital projects for mines that were planned two or three years ago. We have also been doing a lot of test plants and trying to get oil out of shale in Canada. Locally we have been doing a lot of work on the new Allegheny Technologies plant going in.”

Craig Anderson, general manager for Syracuse Castings in Tooele, said his company has actually seen more work come in from the national economic slowdown.

“When the economy starts tanking, the government likes to spend more money on municipal jobs, and because most of our business is municipal business, it works out well for us,” he said. “We have actually been busy working overtime from the demand, so we haven’t been affected much at all by the slowdown. Our location is also ideal for our geographic region, because we are centrally located for the 11 Western states we serve.”

Doug Radunich: dougrad@tooeletranscript.com