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ASU may take hard look at Daytona site

By JACKIE LEATHERMAN
Today's News-Herald
Published Friday, March 12, 2010 11:24 PM MST

One of the first official steps to determine if this city can support a four-year university is slated to occur March 23.

The Lake Havasu Unified School District Governing Board is scheduled to vote on an agreement during a special board meeting that would launch a “feasibility study,” according to the district’s agenda and university official.

The agenda item reads: “Approval of Memorandum of Understanding for and on Behalf of Arizona State University, Havasu Foundation for Higher Education, Lake Havasu City and the Lake Havasu Unified School District #1.”

David A. Young, Arizona State University’s senior vice president of Academic Affairs, said the agreement would allow the entities “to work together over the next 45 days to collect data (and determine) the feasibility of the site.”

Young also said he has yet to see a final draft of the agreement. Today’s News-Herald was unable to obtain a copy of the agreement late Friday afternoon, but is expected to learn more details Monday.

School board President Jo Navaretta said the agreement would allow ASU to determine if “their concept is going to work.”

She also added the agreement asks that the district not discuss potential uses for the site — Daytona Middle School — with anyone else for 45 days after the agreement is signed.

The governing board voted in February to close one of its two middle schools July 1 to save $700,000 of an expected $1.7 million revenue shortfall for the 2010-2011 school year.

“We are very excited about it,” Navaretta said of the agreement. “Let’s face it. It’s very depressing to have to close Daytona and that was a hard decision to make. But once we had made that decision my wheels started turning. And we don’t want to have a site sitting there empty.”

In January, Navaretta stepped down as president of the Havasu Foundation for Higher Education president. The foundation has tried to bring a four-year college here since 2004.

Currently, Mohave Community College has a branch in Lake Havasu City and Northern Arizona University has an extended campus here.

The Havasu Foundation for Higher Education and the Lake Havasu City Council are also meeting on March 23. Today’s News-Herald was unable to confirm if the agreements would be on their agendas that day.

Lake Havasu City Mayor Mark Nexsen declined to comment until ASU officially released information.

Bill Ullery, the foundation’s volunteer executive director, previously told the Today’s News-Herald that a successful college needs to be close to restaurants and shops and the possible Daytona site provides easy access to Main Street.

He also previously pointed out several of the “under-utilized” hotels near Daytona could transform to college dormitories.

Navaretta said Friday the potential university here would be a “win-win al the way around.”

“Having a university will be a shot in the arm for the economy of our city,” she said. “Education is a business and it will bring dollars into this town.”

You may contact the reporter at jleatherman@havasunews.com

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Comments (13 comment(s))

tomgarven wrote on Mar 17, 2010 6:41 PM:

" bobo [said in part] "Tom Garven"...knowing you live in this town, maybe I will reconsider and invest in "Wind Energy".

Thank you bobo I got a wonderful chuckle out of your statement. We don't laugh enough these days do we.

Just went to a renewable energy conference today in Kingman. About 300 people showed up for the first of three sessions. I am of course only guessing but it is my guess that before the three sessions were over about 700 people in Kingman will know what types of skills will be needed so they can find work in the renewable energy business. People like Welders, Pipe Fitters, Iron Workers, Operating Engineers, Concrete finishers, Electricians and many more crafts. Never can tell even yours truly might end up being part of the engineering team. Also in attendance were the labor unions, government, educational officials from MCC and other business and private business representatives.

It was really refreshing and exciting to see a community getting behind the construction of two solar power projects and a wind farm to be constructed just south of Hoover Dam. Oh how I wished we were on top of job creation stuff like this for our community. Those in attendance were:

AZ State Build. & Const. Trades Council
Albiasa Corporation
Arizona Western College
BP Wind Energy
Hualapai Valley Solar LLC
Mohave Community College
The REPACT Consortium
UniSoruce Energy Services and
Mohave County Workforce Development, and almost every labor union was represented.

Jobs are coming to Mohave county but will they come to Havasu - that is the question? It appears to me that individuals in Havasu who want to work might have to travel to take advantage of some of the thousands of jobs coming to our area. This was an exciting and positive experience in a time when so many are unemployed.

O.K. I know this is long bobo - I just thought the community should know what is going on outside of our city limits.

Tom G. "

bobo wrote on Mar 17, 2010 8:19 AM:

" "Tomgarven"...knowing you live in this town, maybe I will reconsider and invest in "Wind Energy". "

tomgarven wrote on Mar 16, 2010 9:10 PM:

" Ah bobo you are so hard on people. I felt like stingray was just expressing his/her opinion about housing prices. I also feel housing prices would improve but instead of discussing housing prices lets discuss nuclear power which you seem to favor.

In your post you stated "We need classes in Nuclear Energy to secure our future."

I worked in the nuclear power industry for 20 years and was also a well paid consultant to a lot of senior management personnel in the utility industry. I also traveled around the U.S. evaluating the adaquacy of operational procedures and best management practices at most of the nuclear plants in the U.S. So I can tell you with some authority that there will not be any new nuclear units built in the U.S. until we solve the following three problems. Note: we recently restarted construction on two nuclear units that were partially constructed but shutdown.

So why aren't we building nuclear plants now?

1. No one wants one built in their backyard.
2. No utility can currently afford to build one, and;
3. They take too long to build to do us much good with peak oil projected to occur by 2014.

I will however give you an 'A' for effort. Mod IV and V reactor designs [high temperature gas cooled and molten salt reactors] are certainly feasible. However until I see picketers in the streets asking for a nuclear plant to be build in their neighborhood I just don't see much happening. Even the government backed loan guarantee's just announced won't go into affect for years. Also most colleges no longer even offer classes in Nuclear Engineering however a couple still do. Of course that doesn't mean we couldn't.

Projected costs for an advanced reactor design is anywhere from $15-30 billion and the process of designing, licensing, constructing, and bringing an experminential plant to operation is projected to be somewhere between 10-20 years for an advanced reactor design according to the government. Did you know that we no longer even have the industrial capacity to forge existing Reactor Pressure Vessels in the U.S. We would even have to import those from Europe or Russia.

For heavens sakes you can't even build a beign solar photovolatic plant [the one that uses almost no water] in the desert without protests by someone. Can you imagine trying to build an advanced and experimental reactor design somewhere withing say 100 miles of L.A., Denver or Boston. Of course the government could just do another TVA project and tell the public to go pound sand and I will be the first to admit that our government is getting pretty good at doing just that.

So here is my challenge. Go solve No. 1 ,2 and 3 then call me. We will build the plants but don't expect them to go online until about 2030 because that's when a significant amount of power will probably be available. Of course by 2030 we will be well on our way to having a few thousand more wind turbines, some solar power plants and photovolatic panels on most of our homes.

I sincerely wished the conditions were different. I really miss working in the heavy construction industry. The daily challenges were in fact fun. Just so happens we don't have very much of that left in our country do we?

Will nuclear rise again - maybe.

Tom G. "

desertmouse wrote on Mar 16, 2010 4:58 PM:

" yes lets keep our teens here so they are more available for our police to ticket, harrass, arrest and bother. We need something in town to account for the extremely high cop to citizen ratio. "

getoverit wrote on Mar 16, 2010 3:11 PM:

" I'm sure when ASU comes to Havasu they will offer a large varity of classes for who ever attends their school. It' doesn't have to be just what will benifit our community. Just having local students attend a 4 yr school will boost our econemy along with those from close by community's. "

bobo wrote on Mar 15, 2010 4:51 PM:

" Your partially right stingray. It would help growth in Lake Havasu, but I have no idea how you know what the price of a home should be. If the new College offered a business class, maybe you would learn that supply and demand determine what the price of a house should be. Also, the other "artsy" classes you referred to: Eco building, alternative power will soon be realized the farce they are. We need classes in Nuclear Energy to secure our future. And why on earth would someone come to Lake Havasu to study marine biology? To be an expert on the Quagga mussel? The razorback sucker? Come on, get real! "

stingray1946 wrote on Mar 15, 2010 12:20 PM:

" nourthbound. FYI LHUSD and Daytona middle school currently own the ground beyond the parking lot down to the street below. It also owns the land behind the school that stretches down to daytona. I once helped design a new public gym to go there that never happened. This is how i know. I think that a four year college would help this city prosper once again.... The mall might actually become a mall. Prices of homes would rise back up to where they should be and all of the shops on Mcculloch would thrive. Finally. I think this school would be great as long as ASU made it a school that people would strive to go to. Maybe be smart and have it speciallise in Eco building, alternitive power, and or marine biology something that this city can provide and thrive from. "

LakeLizard wrote on Mar 15, 2010 11:52 AM:

" I can agree with you on this Northbound....not only would it be great to be able to get a Bachelor's right in havasu it would give that thing called MCC some competition. "

bobo wrote on Mar 15, 2010 9:16 AM:

" I think this was the idea to begin with. When they built Thunderbolt, it was to replace Daytona. Then the population and building boom happened so they needed both. Now student populations are going down, back to original plan.What they didn't anticipate was the whiney, self serving teachers who blew this whole thing out of proportion. Good for the future of Havasu to have an ASU campus in town. "

northbound wrote on Mar 14, 2010 11:04 PM:

" This would be great if the big empty lot in front of the school is for sale ASU can even build on. This would be great for our community. "

Wisconsin wrote on Mar 13, 2010 11:47 AM:

" Excellent!!! One of the best ideas I have heard since I moved here. My son would love to go to school right here. And it would be great for our local economy, as well as letting the rest of the country know that we are not just a snowbird/retirement community. "

5293 wrote on Mar 13, 2010 9:36 AM:

" I think ASU coming here would not only help our city's economy to prosper, but help the hundreds of young adults that would love to go to college, but cannot afford to quit jobs and move away to complete courses started at MCC.

Crossing my fingers! "

! wrote on Mar 13, 2010 8:06 AM:

" Maybe there was no reason to close Daytona and this was the plan the whole time. Ya I'm a skeptic... "

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