Since 1954, Geneva Rock has prided itself on providing more than just exceptional concrete, asphalt, aggregate, and construction services in Utah — it’s held a nearly 70-year commitment to growth and innovation.
From humble beginnings in Orem, Geneva Rock quickly became one of Utah’s largest suppliers of ready-mix concrete. As its presence grew along the Wasatch Front, so did its products and services — moving into sand and gravel supply, hot-mix asphalt plants, and a range of construction services such as asphalt and concrete paving, utility work, and excavation and site work.
This dedication to continuously growing and developing as a company has extended to a complete overhaul of the Geneva Rock Ogden yard. Beginning with the successful outcome of Ogden’s Washington Boulevard project in 1991, Geneva Rock gradually found its way into Northern Utah. It started with plans for a concrete plant batch plant near Ogden’s 20th Street around 2008, leading to the purchase of the Ogden yard a few years later and a new office building in 2018.
That continued devotion to Northern Utah has manifested itself through a large-scale upgrade and development to the Geneva Rock Ogden yard — including the construction of new corporate offices, workshops, aggregate storage, and a full-service lab for concrete and asphalt testing.
“The Ogden yard serves more than just the Ogden area with increasing demand for products and services in the Northern Davis, Weber, and Box Elder county areas,” Jay Ritchie, Geneva Rock president, says. “Those areas will soon be able to offer new and improved, state-of-the-art ready-mix and asphalt facilities. These will open up a greater ability to backup existing plants and will be a game-changer for us, the industry and our customers alike.”
Ritchie is confident that having cement storage on-site, along with fly ash storage through sister company, Bridgesource, on-site, Geneva Rock will be able to mitigate shortages, should those continue to occur.
“It gives us the ability to better control our own destiny rather than be so dependent on others for our day-to-day needs,” Ritchie says. “We can take more of that responsibility on our own shoulders and be able to provide better service to our customers.”
The impact of the enhanced Ogden yard will be felt throughout the Geneva Rock customer base as all handling of aggregates will be done digitally in the improved facility and aggregate piles will be stored in silos and off the ground.
“The greatest bulk of material will go directly into these storage silos,” Ritchie says. “This will minimize the number of piles that are out in the open and impacted by the elements. It’ll be much more environmentally sound as everything from how the aggregates are handled to how power is distributed around the property will be managed digitally, creating efficiency and exactness.”
With a full completion date of late Spring 2022, Geneva Rock’s area manager for construction, Mike Westbroek, is enthusiastic and hopeful that this development will bring with it a myriad of benefits and improvements.
“It’s going to be really great,” Westbroek says. “It’s very exciting to have all of these resources together on one site and I really think it will enhance overall productivity and, ideally, bring operations costs down.”
For Ritchie, Westbroek, and the Geneva Rock teams in Northern Utah, the new and improved facilities are something that will make the Geneva Rock presence felt even more throughout the Northern Utah counties — particularly when it comes to competition.
“From a facilities standpoint, this puts us in the same ballpark as many of our competitors up in Northern Utah, but our supply improvements now move us ahead, in my eyes,” Ritchie says.