Sod fills site in lieu of science building

On a campus filled with buildings, two trees spring up from an empty site just east of the University Inn. Unfortunately for students, the allotment of funds needed to construct a building here could be just as sparse as the site’s vegetation.

USU is asking legislature for $45 million in order to construct a new biological sciences building on the location, but according to some campus officials, the outlook does not look good.

“It didn’t score real high on the statewide priority list,” said Ben Barrett, director of Facilities Planning, Design and Construction. “It’d be a long shot this year for that project. This is the first year we’ve submitted for that project. Quite often that’s something you kind of have to get in line for.”
While $45 million would help the project, Jim MacMahon, dean of the College of Science, said it would take even more money to fund the building’s construction.

Barrett and MacMahon said it is possible USU will get partial funding for the project this year, which will allow them to begin design work. Barrett said the design work alone on a building of this size would take almost a year to complete.

Knowing it was not likely the project would be approved its first year of submission, Barrett said they laid sod and installed an irrigation system in order to make the land available for campus activities, as well as to provide an environmental benefit and save time spraying weeds. USU Statesman

USU receives grant for online learning

Utah State University has been awarded a research grant from the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation.

The grant is for a project aimed at improving retention of engineering undergraduate students within the critical first two years of study. The three-year grant begins this month.

The grant enables USU to implement and formally evaluate the use of online learning forums within distance delivered sections of the engineering calculus course sequence, taught within the USU distance education system. The goal is to help graduate more professionals into engineering and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics — STEM — disciplines. Deseret News

Aggies ask legislature for building funds

Students lobbying for USU during the Utah state legislative session this year plan to try a more positive approach than in previous years with the politicians who decide how much money higher education receive and what projects do and do not get a stamp of approval.

USU will ask the legislature this year for $60 million to build a new biological sciences building and renovate labs in the Biology and Natural Resources building, as well as seek approval to bond money to build a student recreation center, said Neil Abercrombie, director of government relations. The university also has plans for a $20 million instructional building at USU Eastern.

Public colleges and universities around the state, including USU, send student-staffed lobbyist groups like the GRC to the state capitol every year to lobby for funding and projects. These schools use events like the annual Research On Capitol Hill Day, where student research projects go on display in the state capitol rotunda to persuade legislators their projects are worth funding.

Wilson said the GRC’s approach to legislators will be more positive this year, explaining the great things USU does rather than why it needs more money. Utah Statesman

Logan to Review Impact Fees for Developers

The Logan Municipal Council is reviewing impact fees charged to those developing in the city.
Mark Nielsen, Logan’s public works director, said Thursday that the fees are typically set for a five- to six-year period and are then analyzed again.

“The previous fees were in 2005; it’s been six to seven years,” Nielsen said. “We’ve been studying it for about a year, and the impact fees ... look at future growth and allocate costs to growth that provide for that development to continue.”

Impact fees charged for a single-family unit, for instance, would go from the existing total of $4,833 down to $4,791 —a bit less than a 1 percent decrease.

“The reason is that the development pressure now is less than it was seven years ago,” Nielsen said. “We’ve recalculated everything, and based on going through the analysis, there’s less there than there was.”

A public hearing on the issue is set for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 8, and the council could approve the new fees that night. The Municipal Council meets at 290 N. 100 West in Logan. Herald Journal

U.S. Bank opens branch in Brigham City Walmart

U.S. Bank is operating a branch inside the Walmart at 1200 S. Commerce Way in Brigham City.

According to their website, U.S. Bancorp, with $321 billion in assets, is the parent company of  U.S. Bank, the 5th largest commercial bank in the United States. The company operates 3,086 banking offices and 5,086 ATMs, and provides a comprehensive line of banking, brokerage, insurance, investment, mortgage, and trust and payment services products to consumers, businesses and institutions.

Salt Lake Tribune

Brigham City releases more hotel loan detail

Two weeks ago Brigham City Council voted to approve an application to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to facilitate a $1 million interest free loan for an as yet unnamed hotelier to locate at the city's Academy Square. If the application is approved and the loan is dispersed, the city will be effectively on the hook to ensure its repayment.

"This is not a grant – the money has to be paid back," said Paul Larsen, Brigham City's economic development director.

The USDA's Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant (REDLG) program offers and provides zero percent interest rate loans or grants to qualifying rural telephone and electric cooperatives for use in economic and community development projects. The fact that Brigham City has a population of less than 25,000 and an electric utility cooperative initially qualifies the city for the loan program, according to city officials and the USDA's rural development website.

Larsen acknowledged the concern of a developer defaulting on a loan that could leave taxpayers to foot the $1 million bill and explained that the city has plans to protect against this risk. The city would create a "community development project area" in the vicinity of the Academy Square as well as utilize tax increment financing to back the loan in the event of the hotel defaulting. 

The tax increment, Larsen said, would act as collateral for the loan as part of the inter-local participation agreement. This would serve to hold the developer accountable and ultimately ensure that any incentives, such as a $1 million loan with the city's name on it, be performance based. Box Elder News


Related post: If you build it, will they come?

If you build it, will they come?

Brigham City Council voted last week to approve an application to facilitate a $1 million interest free loan that would pass through the city to the developer for the development and funding of a hotel in conjunction with the Academy Square project.

"There is need and room in the market for an additional hotel in Brigham City," said economic development director Paul Larsen.

However, some local business persons feel that this might be an example of putting the cart before the horse. Tim Haderlie, general manager of the Logan and Brigham City Crystal Inns, says that by helping to fund hotels and restaurants in the area the city is setting an "unfair playing field."

The downtown Brigham City project has been a long time coming and the Academy Square building has been vacant since the early 1980s with Brigham City purchasing the building over 15 years ago. Many city officials, including the community and economic development department see the opportunity to create jobs and thereby increase the tax base. One agent who has been involved in securing properties for the Academy Square project has said that he has "strived to be fair and advise in a professional way to provide elected officials with the keys to make the decisions." Box Elder News

Box Elder County's first charter school hopes to complement, not compete

The nearly 450 students who will be the first to walk through the doors of the Promontory School of Expeditionary Learning this fall will experience a "cutting edge" education that started with parents discussing educational options and ended with the formation of Box Elder County's first charter school.

There is a growing body of evidence that supports the success of the expeditionary learning model. According to information from Expeditionary Learning, the organizing body of the educational model, several studies show that students who attend expeditionary learning schools outperform their peers in traditional school in English/language arts and math; have greater problem-solving, critical thinking and research skills; and are better prepared to be successful in college and the work place. Currently, about 165 schools in 30 states use the expeditionary educational model.



Under the charter school system, which the Utah State Legislature passed into law in 1998, the money from the weighted pupil unit (WPU) for each student goes to the school that student is attending. With the WPU at $2,842, Box Elder School District lost $1,122,590.

Box Elder School District Superintendent Ron Wolff said, in a case of good news/bad news, the district was able to reduce expenses to cover the loss, but it came as a result of staffing cuts forced by enrollment changes due to PSEL. Box Elder School District had to cut 11 positions due to decreased enrollment in traditional schools. Box Elder News Journal

Utah battery innovators get $5 million in federal grants

The round of funding came as part of $43 million released by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E.

Utah State University will get $3 million to develop advanced battery management systems that will optimize the performance of each cell in a battery pack. The goal is reduce the cost of vehicle batteries by 25 percent.

Also winning funding is the Salt Lake City firm Materials & Systems Research, Inc., or MSRI, which is to receive $1.73 million in Small Business Innovation Research money to improve sodium battery membranes. The idea is to make the membranes stronger, safer, longer-lasting and less costly to produce. Salt Lake Tribune

Residents show support for Willow Park Zoo

Several local residents turned out Tuesday to speak in favor of Logan’s Willow Park Zoo during a Municipal Council meeting.

Options for the zoo’s future include closing it down, giving ownership of the facility to Cache County or reverting back to a joint ownership/funding arrangement between the city and county, according to Russ Akina, Logan’s parks and recreation director. He has noted the zoo may have trouble getting through the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

County Councilman Val Potter committed Tuesday to work with the county’s RAPZ (Restaurant, Arts, Parks and Zoos) Tax committee and the Cache County Council “to make sure that we get additional RAPZ funding for the zoo this year and ongoing.” He asked Logan councilmembers to commit to matching that potential increased funding. Herald Journal

Despite budget crunch, university has been able to build on

Today, buildings with grandiose architectural designs and state-of-the-art scientific features now seem to technologically overshadow Old Main — like the green solar panels bolstered on the side of the new Agricultural Sciences building or the towering brick structure of the Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. Not too far away is the USU Innovation Campus, which houses ultra-modern buildings dedicated to research efforts.

Since 2008, when the nation’s economy fell into a recession, the eight public colleges and universities within the Utah System of Higher Education lost ten of millions of dollars in state appropriations — $25.2 million of which was cut from USU alone. But even over those last four years, those institutions, including USU, have built and will continue to build more facilities.


 Elsewhere in the state, Utah Valley University broke ground last year for a $30.6 million, 160,000-square-foot science building and the first phase of the University of Utah’s new home for its School of Business was completed last year, rising eight stories over the south end of campus.

The situation seems to be at odds with USU increasing tuition, laying off employees and experiencing a significant shortfall in operation and maintenance funding from the state — all due to the budget cuts. The answer to how USU is able to build as many buildings as it has is a not an easy one, but it is commonly misunderstood where building funding comes from.

Dave Cowley, USU’s vice president for business and finance says the same pot of money used to fund buildings is not the same pot used for faculty and staff compensation increases. Some of those dollars are one-time funds — to actually build a facility — while others are on-going from year to year — in order to keep the facility running year after year. Herald Journal

Bank of Utah gives Logan branch a makeover

Bank of Utah said it has launched a major remodeling of its Logan branch. The office will remain open during construction, which is anticipated to be completed in mid-July 2012. Six members of the bank’s commercial and mortgage lending teams have been temporarily relocated to the Providence branch until the project is completed. Salt Lake Tribune

Cache Valley Bank gets $11.7M for small businesses

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has provided a Logan-based bank with $11.7 million to boost its ability to lend to small businesses. The money comes through the Small Business Lending Fund, which “encourages community banks to [help companies] expand their operations and create jobs,” according to a Treasury Department statement. Salt Lake Tribune