Hall Labs and South Provo: Revitalizing the
Site of a Former Economic Powerhouse
Prepared by Hall Labs, LLC
Rev: 22 Nov 2019
Overview
Original Development and Growth
For over 60 years, Hall Labs has been bringing
together resources to develop powerful
technologies for the benefit of society. Its
multidisciplinary teams and state-of-the-art
facilities support research and development
projects as well as several early-growth stage
companies. Hall Labs has strong ties to Provo
City and Utah where its spin off entities have
employed thousands of scientists, engineers,
technicians, legal, support, business and other
professional personnel over the years and
where the company itself continues to innovate
at an even accelerated rate from its
headquarters in south Provo’s Ironton area.
In 1923, the Columbia Steel Corporation broke
ground for a pig iron plant on a 385-acre site in
south Provo. Iron production began the
following year, and the occasion was celebrated
with speeches from several dignitaries,
including Heber J. Grant, who was then the
president of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints. He declared, “We have been
accused that we have not welcomed the new
industries to our state; it is an absolute
falsehood. We gladly welcome all industries
that will develop Utah’s resources.”
Over the next 20 years, the Ironton facilities and
supporting supply chain expanded steadily. By
the early 1940s, production capacity was up to
600 tons of iron per day, making it the largest
pig iron plant in the west. A second blast
furnace with a production capacity of 900 tons
per day was put into operation in 1943.
This article describes how Hall Labs has worked
with Provo City since the 1980s on redeveloping
the former site of the Ironton Steel Mill, with
the goal of turning hundreds of acres of
brownfield ruins into an upscale business park.
Photo from the 1923 opening ceremony for the Ironton Works. One newspaper predicted “a crowd
of 40,000 to 50,000,” which would have been four to five times the population of Provo in 1920.
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Tapping a heat of iron in the cast house of the blast furnace. 1942 photo by Andreas Feininger.
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During World War II, production at the Ironton
plant was overseen by the Defense Plant
Corporation, a wartime organization of the
Federal Government. The Defense Plant
Corporation also oversaw production at Geneva
Steel, which was constructed in Utah Valley in
the 1940s.
• The non-physical obstacles of numerous
overlapping easements, messy property
title histories (missing information in some
areas, overlapping parcel boundaries in
others), and other legal uncertainties
pertaining to the land.
• Substantial environmental issues, including
low-level contaminated soils in some areas
and unassessed wetlands in others.
After the war, both Geneva and the expanded
Ironton facilities were turned over to private
industry. A series of mergers in the 1950s and
1960s eventually led to both plants operating as
divisions of U.S. Steel until 1966 when the
Ironton plant was closed down.
Some of the Ironton facility was dismantled and
demolished over the next few years, but the
university ultimately abandoned its
development intentions. As stated in materials
from the university’s archives: “after much
planning and study for the development of an
industrial park on the site, [in 1971] BYU
announced [its] . . . indefinite postponement
because geographic and physical problems on
the site appeared to make the economics of the
project unfeasible.”
Stagnation and Non-Use
U.S. Steel donated the 335-acre Ironton site to
Brigham Young University in 1968. The
university accepted the donation with the
intention of developing the site into an
industrial park. However, the land came with
two blast furnaces and over 50 major
structures, including several multi-storied
power and storage buildings and a coke tower.
Redevelopment of the site would require
solutions to many significant obstacles:
After discontinuation of the university’s efforts,
a variety of redevelopment plans were
considered by various parties. Proposals ranged
from a concrete crushing facility to a minor
league baseball stadium. With very limited
exceptions, however, no further redevelopment
materialized.
• The physical obstacles of the extremely
robust Ironton Works building ruins,
including thousands of tons of reinforced
concrete, rail sidings, and slag dumps.
A view of the plant in 1968, two years after it was closed, and in 2013, another 45 years later.
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Hall Labs Involvement
purchased by Schlumberger in 2015.
Current facilities include a 69,300 ft2
production and an 11,900 ft2 R&D/testing
building in south Provo as well as original
production facilities near BYU campus.
Hall Labs was founded by Dr. H. Tracy Hall, who
is famous for inventing the process used to
create synthetic diamond. Hall Labs is
patterned after Edison Labs, which brought
together all the resources needed to grow a
new technology concept from start to finish,
and it has achieved significant breakthroughs in
Dr. Hall’s original field and many others.
• IntelliServ: pioneered high speed
downhole data transmission. Purchased by
Grant Prideco in 2006. Current facilities
include an 84,000 ft2 production and R&D
building and several large outdoor staging
and testing areas.
Hall Labs moved its headquarters to the Ironton
area in the 1980s, and since then has sought to
develop the area in a way that establishes
improvements for the long term.
• NovaPick: pioneered the use of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) materials in
asphalt and mining operations. Now
distributed through the worldwide
Caterpillar dealer network. Current
facilities include a 6,000 ft2 production
building and shared R&D and testing
facilities in other campus buildings.
Hall Labs has grown and exited multiple
businesses from seed stage, and all but the first
of them still operate in whole or in part in the
Ironton area. A summary list:
• The first Hall Labs facility in the area was a
machine shop that later relocated to the
Provo Airport area (Hall Labs still uses the
building where the shop started).
• Novatek: pioneered the concept of the
solid frame press for producing diamond
and continues to lead the industry in highvolume PCD production. Purchased by
Schlumberger in 2015. Current facilities
include a 27,500 ft2 prototyping and R&D
building and large outdoor testing areas.
• MegaDiamond: started by Tracy Hall in
1966 with two colleagues. Purchased by
Smith International in 1985 and merged
with Novatek facilities after they were
One of several 4 kiloton solid frame diamond presses operating in Ironton-area facilities.
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Enterprises still operating under the Hall Labs
umbrella are housed at the following south
Provo locations, among others:
• 3500 Mountain Vista Parkway, 175,000 ft2
production and R&D building and the first
phase of a seven-phase build-out that will
result in a finished building with a total of
over 1,000,000 ft2.
• 3000 Sierra Vista Way, an 82,000 ft2
building with extensive office, lab, and
warehouse space.
Top to bottom: 3000 Sierra Vista Way, 3500 Mtn Vista Pkwy (phase 1), and ongoing site cleanup, early 2018.
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Cooperation between Hall Labs and Provo City
The refurbishment phase of redevelopment has
involved a third long-term partner: Evans
Grader & Paving. Evans Grader is also
headquartered in south Provo, with its origins
also going back to the 1980s. In a true win-winwin arrangement, Provo City, Hall Labs, and
Evans Grader have steadily worked on clearing
deep reinforced concrete foundations, slag
dumps, rail sidings, etc. as follows:
Provo City eventually purchased most of the
Ironton site in the years after Brigham Young
University abandoned its development efforts
in the early 1970s. Provo worked with
companies like Hall Labs to revive economic
activity in the area through the 1980s, and also
worked with U.S. Steel and the State of Utah to
complete a limited environmental cleanup of
the site between 1998 and 2000. Such efforts,
along with the addition of two new access roads
and trunk line utilities, set the stage for future
redevelopment.
• Provo: wins by selling otherwise
undesirable land to Hall Labs. Payments
are discounted by the costs of cleanup and
refurbishment to a state of shovel
readiness.
Throughout the 1990s and the 2000s, Hall Labs
continued to grow and expand its physical
footprint in the Ironton area, mainly in the area
north of Ironton Boulevard. Provo worked with
Hall Labs as it grew, coordinating on street and
utility improvements, and helping as the
company built several new structures and made
extensive upgrades to existing buildings. South
of Ironton Boulevard where the bulk of the
Ironton Works facility ruins were located, Hall
Labs and the city worked together to settle
issues with property titles, railroad easements,
and the wetlands status of undeveloped land,
all of which have required decades of consistent
effort to resolve.
• Hall Labs: wins by buying nearby land from
Provo at a reasonable price once the costs
of cleanup and refurbishment are
discounted. Payments for cleanup made
to Evans Grader are discounted from the
purchase price.
• Evans Grader: wins by doing ongoing
cleanup in a way that fills out gaps in work
schedules and makes it possible to more
fully utilize equipment and personnel
during the construction off season.
…and of course all parties benefit once the land
is refurbished and new buildings go up in place
of the old graffiti and rubble. The Hall Labs
standard is that the buildings are immediately
occupied by light industry or research and
development businesses, and the employees
and contractors working for the businesses
bring that much more economic life to the area
for the long term.
Consolidation and Refurbishment
Although Provo purchased most of the former
Ironton Plant land, it was far from the only
buyer. Indeed, even after the city addressed
the environmental and physical issues on some
portions of the land, the fragmented nature of
the properties south of Ironton Boulevard
remained a significant obstacle to further
redevelopment. Here again, the long-term
efforts of Hall Labs have made a significant
difference. Over the course of decades it has
managed to consolidate dozens of parcels, and
this consolidation has made it much easier to
work through easement issues, issues with
permitting, refurbishment, etc.
Conclusion
In the early 1900s, iron production and related
industries created thousands of jobs and robust
economic activity in the Ironton area of south
Provo. All of that came to an end in 1966, and
hundreds of acres of formerly productive
industrial property sat largely abandoned for
decades.
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side of this property are complete (see
rendering below). The groundbreaking on the
project, which will include extensive office, lab,
and warehouse space, is currently scheduled for
early 2020.
Then, in the 1980s, Hall Labs came to the area
and set out to reclaim the land and revitalize
the former industrial site. For nearly 40 years,
Hall Labs and Provo City have worked together
to resolve issues ranging from the cleanup of
environmental hazards to the cleanup of messy
property boundaries. The goal of all the work is
to bring back the jobs that were here at the
peak of iron production operations in the
1940s, this time without any pollution and
safety problems. All the major obstacles have
been cleared, and the Ironton area is finally
seeing a surge of redevelopment.
The Ironton area is also part of a recentlydesignated federal Opportunity Zone, which
provides an added impetus for redevelopment.
Hall Venture Partners, an affiliate of Hall Labs,
was established to provide qualified investment
opportunities within the area. Hall Venture
Partners can offer such opportunities in part
because Hall Labs has incubated a portfolio of
promising businesses, many for several years,
centered in the Ironton area.
Hall Labs is continuing with its steady growth in
the area: it is starting work on phase two of the
3500 Mountain Vista Pkwy building pictured on
page 5 of this report, work that will double the
size of the current building. Hall Labs also
continues to acquire land in the area, recently
closing on a purchase of over 60 acres. Plans
for a 175,000 square foot building on the west
All of these factors combine to enable Hall Labs
and Provo City to look boldly to the future. An
area that once was an economic powerhouse
for Utah Valley will soon be a showpiece of the
Valley again.
Rendering of the newest planned Hall Labs facility.
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Aerial views of the Ironton Works in the 1920s and of the same area in 2019, with green
shading on tracts now under Hall Labs development. The southernmost shaded area
(indicated in top right corner) is where the 2020 groundbreaking will take place.
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