OREM — An $11 million college campus in Wasatch County could be finished by 2004.
That's according to a timeline drawn by Utah Valley State College for a proposed campus a few miles north of Heber City.
"There's no room for delays or unforeseen problems," said Barbara Von Diether, who oversees UVSC's efforts to expand its reach into the Heber Valley.
It appears a stalemate with local developers and Wasatch County officials over who will pay for costly sewer and water lines to the 22-acre site on which the college wants to build classrooms and student-service centers is being worked out.
Von Diether said developers who own land adjacent to the proposed campus will pay to bring sewer lines to the site — a cost previously estimated at more than $2 million.
How water will flow to the hoped-for campus is still being worked out. Several alternatives — such as tapping a nearby well or running a line down the hill from the north — are being explored. "(But) the county has guaranteed us water and sewer in time for us to start building," she said.
Von Diether said college officials plan to seek money for campus construction from Utah lawmakers.
A bid for $6 million in tax money will be made in August when the Legislature's subcommittee for higher-education appropriations meets to hear funding proposals.
It won't mark the first time UVSC has asked the state for help with the proposed campus, which is projected to attract 1,100 to 3,000 students by 2005, according to UVSC research.
A request for funding and year-to-year maintenance costs was pulled from the agenda at the outset of the 2000 Legislature by President Kerry Romesburg when he saw the utility-line problem could not be quickly solved.
Romesburg didn't want to risk not being able to build in Heber soon after receiving money from lawmakers and donors.
If the money is allocated by lawmakers, Von Diether expects the planning, designing and bidding-for-contractors phase to last throughout 2002. Construction could start in spring 2003 and the facility could open in 2004.
UVSC, which is charged by state statute with providing college classes in Utah, Summit and Wasatch counties, has offered classes in rented buildings in Heber since 1996.
A $5 million donation given last year by an Internet entrepreneur flush with dot-com cash will largely pay for a 50,000-square-foot flagship building at the proposed campus. Donations to fund a Wasatch Campus have been solicited since a trio of landowners in 1999 gave the school land on a Heber hillside. Potential donors continue to be courted.
A poll commissioned by UVSC in September showed that 93 percent of the 400 residents polled support the idea of a UVSC Wasatch Campus.
Four percent are uncertain and 3 percent oppose the campus.
Academically, the most common request of those polled was for more general-education courses, followed by more business and computer-science offerings, according to the Western Watts survey.
E-MAIL: jeffh@desnews.com