Among the companies offered incentives Friday by the Governor's Office of Economic Development board was homegrown online retailer Backcountry.com, a Park City-based business that sells equipment for outdoor recreational activities, including backpacking, camping, skiing and snowboarding, and mountaineering.

The company operates a 200,000-square-foot distribution center in West Valley City and currently employs 430 Utahns. It is projecting growth of nearly 500 percent over the next five years, which will require as many as 654 new full-time employees. Of those positions, the company indicated it expects about 274 to be high-paying jobs with annual wages averaging well above median pay for the area.

It's “a real Utah success story," said GOED board member Jerry Oldroyd.

Though Backcountry.com had earlier told GOED it was also considering expanding to either the East Coast or Canada, spokeswoman Charla Brown said the company prefers to keep its operations in Utah.

"At this point, with GOED getting on board, we're definitely leaning toward expanding in Utah," she said.

The state's incentive offer, though, is contingent on the company also receiving incentives from West Valley, Park City and Summit County, said David Simmons, GOED board chairman. "We will have to see they provide local incentives and what they will be."

GOED also offered:

* Up to $1.9 million to ST Paper to establish a $170 million tissue paper manufacturing facility in St. George that could eventually employ as many as 140 Utahns.

* $1 million to Dot Foods, the nation's largest "redistributor" of food service products.

Dot, whose customers primarily are companies that distribute food to restaurants and other such establishments, is considering establishing a distribution center in the former Flemming Foods facility in Salt Lake City that would employ up to 150 people.

"We're hoping to make a decision within the next 60 days and open sometime in the first quarter of 2008," said Jim Tracy, a senior vice president at Dot Foods.

* $585,000 to Syracuse Castings West to establish a manufacturing operation in Tooele County that will produce aluminium hatches for the construction industry.

The New York-based company hopes to have a western facility in full production with 22 employees by January 2008, but the facility eventually could employ as many as 89 people.

Tooele Mayor Patrick Dunlavy said Syracuse Castings indicated it was considering Tooele or one other Utah city as sites for its plant.

"This would be a nice project for us to get," Dunlavy said.

steve@sltrib.com