Today I woke up to every man’s nightmare: I had been robbed. I walked out into the living room of my house, opened the front door, and there was the evidence right before me. Looking down at the rolled up Idaho Statesman sitting there on my porch I could see the headline, front-page above the fold: “MERIDIAN TAKES A SWING AT THE BOISE HAWKS.”

If you scroll down a bit, you’ll note that I posted on that very subject two days ago. The story stemmed from a public meeting of the Meridian Development Corporation where the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey showing huge public support for a new Hawks Stadium, in Meridian. So why would I allege being robbed by Joe Estrella if this is all public information?

At beer and blog a couple weeks ago, this subject came up between Jess Flynn and I. Jess Flynn represents the MDC and does a bang up job. She mentioned that Meridian and MDC were hoping to attract the Hawks there. I noted that the City of Boise in a design Charette almost three years ago had drawn Hawks Stadium into its 30th street Master Plan. I even pulled the plan up on my iPhone and showed it to Jess.

So - Jess and a couple other people were live tweeting that MDC meeting, and sent links to the Hawks presentation. Here’s one of them from Jess:

So - the 30th Street Master Plan never once came up at the MDC meeting - and Joe Estrella just happened to call the City of Boise about it? Not likely.

It’s especially not likely since according to my search of the Statesman archives, the Statesman has never once covered the 30th Street Master plan.

So I called Joe on it, and I copied his boss. Here’s his explanation:

Chris,

Just wanted you to know that the source for my story was somebody who knows Todd Rahr personally and had spoken to him about the situation.

The 30th Street Plan information came from my conversation with Boise officials who went into great detail, including mentioning that the stadium could be built at another site like the Boise Bench.

And as I’m sure you noticed, my story centered on Meridian’s request for an exclusive arrangement between the two parties in exchange for funding the feasibility study. The sources for that information were an MDC and city official.

I replied to Joe:

Joe: in my view that is a weak explanation for how the story came about. In the first place there is no reason for you to call Boise officials to talk about the Hawks since the Hawks reside on County property in the city of Garden City - you had to have been prompted to call John and ask him specifically about 30th street. Secondly, if you are unaware of the social media conversations that were swirling around this issue for two days that speaks as poorly for you as does the more likely case that you just simply borrowed my analysis and passed it off as your own.

Whatever the case, the Statesman has a long way to go in the social media/new media realm. Your organization simply treats the new social media channels as broadcast channels, and is the ONLY media outlet in the Valley that does so.

I remain unconvinced by Joe’s explanation; I have not yet heard from Vicki Gowler. I think the case is clear. This story emanated from my conversations with Jess Flynn (also recounted on her blog), appeared on my blog two days ago, then magically appeared on the front page of the Statesman.

There’s been a lot of hullabaloo surrounding Hawks stadium recently, mostly coming from Meridian. I have to hand it to Mayor DeWeerd and the Meridian Development Corporation: they have a vision, and a mission and they are going after it.

This morning the Boise Hawks unveiled a survey that showed a vast majority (75%+) of the 300 people surveyed, favored construction of a new multi-purpose sports facility somewhere in the Valley. It turns out that a plurality of people also identified MERIDIAN as the favored location for a new sports facility. I am guessing that this will have a few people at the City of Boise upset.

In January 2007, a design charrette for the 30th District Master Plan in Boise, revealed that the 200 people in attendance hoped that a new Hawks stadium would be built in downtown Boise. The photo below appears on page 185 of the 30th Street Master Plan, available on the City’s website.

Hawks Stadium envisioned as part of the 30th Street Neighborhood

So what say you, City of Boise officials? Are you working up a deal to make the stadium a centerpiece of a new 30th Street Neighborhood? The implementation plan for 30th Street says that within 1-3 years Boise City and CCDC will:

Identify where land assembly, land acquisition and/or development partnerships would help implement the development concept for each subdistrict. Initiate conversations with property owners to determine their level of interest in selling property, land assembly and/or development.

Where are we on this project? Granted the plan only went forward in June 2009, but with Meridian breathing down your necks, it might be time to kick this project into high gear - unless you really like the sound of “MERIDIAN HAWKS.”

This week the news broke that Mayor Phil Bandy of Eagle was resigning, apparently tired of “personal attacks” levied against him for his taking another job (though his Mayor duties are a full time position), and constant battling with City Councilman Al Shoushtarian. The Statesman has the full scoop.

The question in my mind, though, isn’t “who should be the next Mayor of Eagle” but should Eagle even continue existence as a city. Here’s the facts:

• It can’t afford its city hall space
• It has laid off 40% of its employees
• It has reduced its budget by a third
• City hall is closed on Friday’s because it cannot afford to stay open
• The City is borrowing money to stay afloat

This sounds like a city that needs to unincorporate, and get taken over by Meridian.

I say the same thing about Garden City. Ada Sheriff Gary Raney has said that he can provide law enforcement services to the municipality for less than what the Garden City police force currently costs. If I recall correctly too, GC has had problems in the past with making its contributions to Valley Regional Transit. The GC folks haven’t been able to get anything done with the fairgrounds either (though I am not sure there is any local government ready to tackle that problem).

So - Ada County has at least two cities on life support, and regional growth issues coming at us from all sides. That certainly isn’t aided by weak, fractured governments. These cities need to get it together, or give their marbles to someone else.

TOO MUCH HUMAN CAPITAL IN CHINA

In China there are too many college grads and not enough jobs. So much for the theory about just creating lots of human capital.

PAY FOR TRANSIT OR TEAR OUT YOUR DOWNTOWN

So . . . why should we fund the bus system to a greater extent? Well it turns out that the more you reduce transit into the central business district (downtown) the more of your city you have to tear out to build parking lots. Want a more robust downtown? We’re gonna need that local option, yo.

EVERYONE BUT BOISE GETS TIGER FUNDS

It also turns out that the 100 largest cities in the U.S. (BOI is around 84 or 86 depending on who is estimating when and with what data) got 70% of the TIGER funds. Boise, as you recall, got bupkis. Does this foretell bad things? Are we not part of the renewed federal interest in cities?

HIGH SPEED RAIL FROM RENO TO SLC. BOI: NO TRAIN FOR YOU!

Another favorite of mine from this week is the discovery of a new advocacy group - the Western High Speed Rail Alliance. In another shut-out for Boise and Idaho, this coalition has formed to advocate for high-speed rail routes all over the west, including a route from SLC to Reno. SLC to Reno? Boise doesn’t figure in to the planning.

Economic developers and especially politicians love big signature economic development projects because they provide readily recognizable symbols of their supposed effectiveness. But sometimes those projects go awry. Like Olympic Village in Vancouver. Vancouver lost it’s AAA credit rating when it had to bail out the failed hedge fund that financed the Olympic Village project. Word to local governments everywhere . . .

Saw a story last week that said Portland just passed a $613 plan to improve bike infrastructure over the next 20 years. I know it’s apples and oranges, but $60 million for a streetcar downtown seems like a bargain by comparison. Full story in the Portland Business Journal.

For years people have complained about all the “brown boxes” in Boise’s downtown, but no, we’re not the only one complaining about our drab architecture. A gleaming, 54 story glass box now graces the L.A. skyline, the first skyscraper completed in that city since 1992 - and the critics don’t like it. Says L.A. Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne:

As far as architectural ambition goes, though, the building makes a faint, even passive impression, despite the diverting patterns on its facade. It is more focused on operating as a glossy vertical marker for L.A. Live — and the tower is hard to miss from any of downtown’s freeways — than on exploring a fresh or idiosyncratic path for high-rise design in L.A.

Maybe the city of Los Angeles would like to trade L.A. Live for our Grove Hotel?

Read the whole story at the L.A. Times site.

The only question I had after viewing the graph was, “well, yeah, but what about other policy makers?” He answers that too:

The data are robust when you look beyond the CEA to other top posts normally held by PhD economists. All assistant secretaries of Treasury for Economic Policy appointed during the Bush 43 and Obama Administrations had PhDs from Harvard. During the same period, all chief economists appointed to the IMF had PhDs from MIT, and, except for Don Kohn, who was promoted from within and Susan Bies who was appointed as a banker, all PhD economists appointed to the Federal Reserve Board were from Cambridge MA.

So the crash? Blame it on Harvard.

Veritas.

(H/T to Tim Merrick for sending me the data that I used in this post. You can read the whole publication of the Science and Engineering Indicators, published by the National Science Board, at the National Science Foundation’s website: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/start.htm The data in this post comes from Chapter 8, the state indicators.)

This is a follow on to the previous post where I tried to illustrate the financial strength of Idaho’s universities relative to regional and national competitors. This was in direct response to the formation of the new lobbying group, the Idaho Technology Council. The Council and its supporters, as you recall, are huge proponents of increasing Idaho’s human capital, especially in relation to the development of Idaho’s technology-based economy. My next post will deal with the technology side of this discussion, today we’ll start with the higher ed component.

I hate always seeming like the bad guy here. I am not. I sincerely hope that the Technology Council is a success, and I would love to live to see the day that Boise State University, my alma mater, actually morphed into a “metropolitan research university of distinction.” However, I have consistently maintained that almost every premise from which we operate in this state, is false. We have lots of grand plans for spinning off university technology, and growing this booming tech sector, but folks, that just isn’t to be Idaho’s lot in life. This state simply cannot be competitive in those areas. It is time to rip out our pre-conceived notions by the roots, and get a new plan. Every economic development plan in this state needs to be scrapped and thought anew.

Mark Rivers has some good insights, here. SPORTS. We can do that. Recreational technology businesses and tourism. We can do that. We’re not doing them very well, but we could. But we cannot and should not expect our universities and state to do is become a sophisticated research hub that will one day cure cancer or even launch an important disruptive technology. Won’t happen. Here’s the evidence:

Academic R&D Output, United States, 2006

Academic Article Output in Science and Engineering, U.S., 2006

The research and development spending at Idaho’s universities is woefully inadequate - that is what the top graph shows. Idaho is at the bottom of the heap when it comes to basic R & D spending at the university level. The bottom graph shows the research output of science and engineering articles among the scientific community. Again, same story. There just isn’t any output here, folks, and there isn’t going to be, because Idaho and Idahoans are not going to make, in fact do not have the capacity to make, the necessary investment of billions of dollars into the state’s universities. Development of widely dispersed and marketable technologies will probably never happen here. Having a more educated local workforce can happen here; we can certainly graduate more bachelor’s degree holders that we currently do.

I would argue that Idaho’s economic development has become “path dependent.” The social and historic conventions established long ago, and chronic underinvestment in education and infrastructure (to name just a couple things) has placed us upon a path from which we cannot escape.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t pockets of hope, areas for growth and opportunity. As noted I think sports, sports marketing, professional services related to sports, etc., is a great place to start and to FOCUS. What will not work is a blanket strategy of “increasing human capital” and targeting the “information technology” sector. That is destined to fail. If the universities in this state are to be called upon to be a part of the economic engine here, they are going to need small, clearly defined, narrow targets that are directly applicable to very specific capacities in the private sector. “Nanotechnology” is not specific. “Green energy” is not specific. Those are HUGE fields dominated by the biggest players.

The longer we maintain the facade that we have at our fingertips all the tools we need to be the next SLC or the next Denver, the more economically and psychologically painful reality becomes. The sooner we replace grand visions, i.e., fantasies, with small victories, the better.

This is a great and welcome effort, and desperately needed in our state. The only thing that immediately concerns me is that the players in this effort do not seem to understand the price of the things they hope to achieve. What is it that they are asking for? Here’s some snippets from the IBR’s reporting:

“Idaho’s growth as a technology center has cooled, and the Idaho economy cannot afford that,” stated ITC Chairman Rich Raimondi, a recently retired vice president at Hewlett-Packard. “We know the priorities to re-energize growth in this critical sector are human capital, public policy, financial capital and research and development, and we have formed committees with leaders from across the state to work those issues.”

and

“Growing an innovation economy starts with the government, whether it’s federal or state; then it’s research institutions; then it goes to the commercialization of intellectual property. From there you get industry, access to capital and the last part is quality work force.”

Human capital. Research and development. Research institutions. That’s what they want.

And that IS what will work to drive the economy here.

But does anyone realize what this will cost? I do. Here’s the current (at least as of 2007) financial capacity of the WAC and Mountain West Universities as measured by endowments:

1. Hawaii - $ 3 billion
2. Texas Christian University - $1.1 billion
3. BYU $1 billion
4. San Diego State - ($115/ but shares Cal State pool of $875 mm)
5. University of Utah - $700 million
6. La. Tech - ($656 shared)
7. UNLV - $500 million
8. University of New Mexico - $385 million
9. University of Wyoming - $304 million
10. Reno - $240 million
11. Colorado State - $193 million
12. U of Idaho - $188 million
13. New Mexico State - $175 million
14. Utah State - $130 million
15. Fresno State - $113million
16. Boise State - $74 million
17. San Jose State - $50 million
18. Air Force - $15 million (only has a 2 yr old endowment)

So - the picture here is pretty clear. BSU is at the bottom of the pack when it comes to having a big pot of money to fund world-class faculty, graduate students, and lab space. U of I isn’t much better. In this group, the University of Utah is clearly the research powerhouse - but look what they have to operate with: a $700 million endowment.

Don’t get me wrong - in a perfect world we’d do what was necessary to achieve the vision of the Technology Council. However, as I have noted before, there certainly isn’t the private capacity in Idaho to do what this group hopes. If there was sufficient private ability to fund Idaho’s universities at the level of say, the University of Utah, then the “Destination Distinction” capital campaign at Boise State would have a far bigger goal than $175 million. But that goal is the realistic capacity of the private sector in this state.

So that leaves government (and research grants which is another topic entirely) to make up the difference. But with current state support of Boise State running about 22% of BSU’s budget, it’s pretty clear that the requisite financial support of Idaho’s universities is not going to come from the public sector.

Mind you, the Mountain West and the WAC are two of the poorer conference in academe. What if we wanted Idaho’s Universities to be competitive with say, the PAC TEN (which is every Bronco fan’s dream conference) or the Big-10. Well here’s what the financial picture looks like for those schools:

PAC 10

1. Stanford University - $17.2 billion
2. University of Southern California - $3.7 billion
3. University of Washington - $3.2 billion
4. University of California - $2.8 billion
5. University of California, Los Angeles - $2.6 billion
6. Washington State University - $678 million
7. The University of Arizona - $519 million
8. University of Oregon - $498 million
9. Oregon State University - $476 million
10. Arizona State University - $407 million

Wanna be a player in Stanford’s league? Never gonna happen. Even if Boise State is successful in its capital campaign, it still won’t even have half the endowment of ASU. In fact, BSU and U of I combined don’t have the money that ASU has.

What about the Big-10?

Michigan - $7.1 billion
Northwestern - $6.5 billion
Minnesota - $2.8 billion
Ohio State - $2.3 billion
Purdue - $1.8 billion
Penn State - $1.6 billion
Wisconsin - $1.6 billion
Indiana - $1.6 billion
Illinois - $1.5 billion
Michigan State - $1.2 billion
Iowa - $1.0 billion

There is a reason that Michigan, Northwestern, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have world renowned schools of business and/or economics. There is a reason that Illinois has a legendary super computer center. There is a reason that Indiana graduates armies of engineers. MONEY. These schools are rich, rich, rich and can attract the best faculty in the world to their ranks. That is another reason that even the “poorest” school on this list, Iowa, attracts TEN TIMES the research grants of Boise State (Iowa hauls in about $400 million ANNUALLY in research grants and contracts; Boise State is nearing $40 million). They have a lot of money to hire killer faculty that do cutting edge research.

So. You say you want a research institution, eh? Now at least, you know what it’s gonna cost.