Sandpoint campus passes first test
BOISE – A proposal to use millions of dollars in private money to open a University of Idaho branch campus in Sandpoint won accolades Thursday from the State Board of Education.
UI administrators briefed the board on recently unveiled plans by the Wild Rose Foundation to spend at least $28.8 million to build and operate the campus over several years. They touted the plan as a rare opportunity to provide North Idaho residents with better access to a college education.
“I think this is very, very exciting,” said board member Sue Thilo of Coeur d’Alene. “What a wonderful private-public partnership. How lucky are we to have this opportunity.”
Wild Rose Foundation is headed by Dennis Pence, chairman and CEO of Sandpoint-based Coldwater Creek, who has said that if the campus opens, he’ll pay for at least 22 graduate students to study there.
Under a draft agreement, the foundation would construct buildings and help pay for course offerings. Officials estimate 1,000 students might study there and at a North Idaho College facility in Sandpoint that offers supporting general-education courses in five years.
The university would initially sell a 77-acre parcel off North Boyer Road to the foundation for $6.25 million. The foundation would pay for improvements and one or two buildings before the campus opened in two years.
University research programs now located at the Sandpoint property would move to a nearby 15-acre parcel provided by the foundation. Part of the 77-acre plot would be offered to the Lake Pend Oreille School District for a future high school, but would revert to the university if construction doesn’t start in 20 years.
Conceptual drawings show the property divided horizontally by existing wetland, with the university facility of six buildings to the north and the high school to the south.
Students could complete the first two years of their general education requirements at NIC facilities in Sandpoint or Coeur d’Alene before moving into the university programs, said Larry Branen, associate vice president for the university in North Idaho.
The proposal is “frankly one of the most innovative, unique, win-win business plans that I’ve experienced in my years of academic leadership,” said Tim White, university president.
However, board member Blake Hall cautioned administrators that the Legislature might not look kindly on funding future operating costs.
“I don’t want us to get caught in a Catch-22 situation if the Legislature doesn’t allow for the occupancy costs and then we’re trying to figure out what to do with this really beautiful campus that we can’t occupy,” he said.
Administrators expect student fees, foundation donations and money from the land sale to help fund the branch’s operating costs – estimated at more than $3.4 million per year starting in 2009.
The university currently runs academic centers in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and other Panhandle cities, offering a variety of programs. It has operated agricultural research activities in Sandpoint since 1912, but only offers a master’s in educational leadership in the city at present.
Pence has already partnered with the university to make Coldwater Creek a case study for master’s of business students, said Jack Morris, dean of the university’s College of Business and Economics. The new branch would offer master’s degrees in executive business administration – a degree not offered at the UI or other nearby schools – if the board approves it in April.
Pence has committed to funding at least 22 students in the program, Morris said.
Branen said horticulture is one of the state’s five largest agricultural businesses, and the Sandpoint center would include a center focusing on crop research in laboratory and greenhouse spaces.
Administrators are basing the program offerings on the results of a university-funded study of more than 800 high school juniors and seniors, area teachers and NIC students.
The board did not act on the agreement, and university officials will return with more detailed building plans.