Board of Ed gives UI Foundation extension

POCATELLO, Idaho – The University of Idaho Foundation has won extension of the repayment date for a $5 million loan it secured from the school to finance upfront costs of the botched University Place complex in Boise.

“They have acted in good faith to repay the loan, and because of their efforts the board voted to extend for one year the loan between the university and the foundation,” state Board of Education President Rod Lewis said.

Approval was unanimous from the board that wrapped up its two-day meeting on Friday.

It is the second extension of the note, which was originally due in mid-2003. It must now be paid off by the end of 2005.

Interim Foundation Director Mike Wilson said the additional time was needed to try to recover money from others involved in the Boise development.

The foundation originally owed $28 million from its early involvement in University Place but has paid the debt down to $13 million. Officials believe it will be paid off by the end of next year.

The multibuilding, $136 million project was intended to reinforce the University of Idaho’s standing in the state’s largest city in the face of competition from Boise State University. But financial manipulations to bring it off went sour with the economy. It cost the school’s president and financial vice president their jobs, and the complex was scaled back to a single building, the Idaho Water Center, which opened this fall.

The board gave the university authority to spend an estimated $3 million to complete the interior of the building so its Boise-based students can occupy it by summer, moving out of rental space. The school will also negotiate a lease for space in the center with CH2M Hill, a consultant and engineering company, for about $750,000 a year.

University President Tim White said the school is trying to move beyond the controversy that has surrounded the project.

“Our staff has worked day and night to fix something that is an embarrassment to this board, an embarrassment to the university and an embarrassment to the state of Idaho,” White said.

Bringing occupancy to 100 percent from the 60 percent it stands at now, he told the board, should enable people to “quit worrying about how the building is going to be paid for.”