But the tenant will not be a high-tech company, as Ogden envisioned when the city pitched the idea of a High Tech Center to the Utah Legislature five years ago and won $900,000 in state funding to buy the buildings.

Instead, American Can will become home to Amer Sports Corp.'s Winter & Outdoor Americas unit, which sells Salomon and Atomic skis, as well as Suunto watches and other diving instruments.

Company president and Salt Lake City native Mike Dowse said this week that he hopes to move in by early to mid-summer, bringing up to 130 jobs to Ogden, including roughly 40 current employees who now work in Oregon, New Hampshire and California.

Jon Peddie, a developer in Steamboat Springs, Colo., said he acquired the bulk of the American Can property - all but the building that houses DaVinci Academy of Sciences and the Arts - late Friday afternoon. He declined to reveal the purchase price.

Amer Sports will be the first to lease space - a 58,000 square-foot building on the western side of the property along Lincoln Avenue.

Dowse said reusing a historic structure - American Can structures were built from 1914 to 1920 as a cannery for northern Utah's then-thriving vegetable farms - fits well with his company's ethics, and he plans to use the basement for a bicycle garage to encourage employees to pedal to work.

"One of the reasons we're coming to Ogden is, we see the mayor's vision," said Dowse.

Mayor Matthew Godfrey has spent the past two years promoting Ogden as the West's new recreational hub, with nearby ski resorts, two rivers and mountains.

The pitch has worked, where the mayor's previous attempt to lure high-technology companies did not.

Amer Sports, headquartered in Finland, is the 11th - and largest - recreational company to relocate to Ogden in fewer than two years.

Godfrey said earlier this week that he hopes high-tech companies will move to Ogden once the city's cachet as a recreational hub is evident.

When Godfrey went to the Legislature in 2002, he described a technology, educational and research campus that would have high school and college students collaborating with technical experts, professors and successful entrepreneurs.

The American Can buildings were purchased in 2004, but tenants have been hard to find.

Today's vision for the American Can complex still includes technology, but to a lesser degree.

Dave Harmer, the city's director of economic development, said the city's Business Information Center, which supports small business, will move there, and the city is hoping to lure an Ogden-based venture fund, as well as Weber State University's small-business center.

The charter school already in one American Can building - DaVinci Academy of Science and the Arts - emphasizes science.

Peddie, the Colorado developer, said he will work with Salt Lake City and Ogden brokers to fill up the space - about 170,000 square feet after Amer Sports is finished.

"We would like to see high-tech there. At the same time, you know, we'd like to see somebody there."

He has not ruled out the possibility of loft apartments above offices in the taller buildings.

Peddie said he's considering whether to use the boiler building next to the old American Can smokestack as a public space of some sort.

"It might be donated to some user that could manage it for public functions."

Peddie acquired the buildings from Ogden Community Foundation, which, shortly before the closing, took possession of the property from a business consortium that had owned American Can since mid-2004. The foundation is a nonprofit created by Ogden City to receive gifts and grants, Harmer said.

Amer Sports is getting tax-rebate incentives worth nearly $8 million from the Governor's Office of Economic Development to come to Utah.

kmoultonsltrib.com

What has to happen?

* The Ogden City Council, acting as the city's Redevelopment Agency Board, will have to ink a development agreement with the new owner of the property, Colorado developer Jon Peddie.

How the buildings will be used

* Although Amer Sports has said it could eventually employ 230 in Ogden for its ski and diving-instrument business, current plans are for 120 to 130 jobs in Ogden, including about a dozen at a repair center at Business Depot Ogden, located north of downtown.