Prior Lake environmental center endangered

An environmental learning center long planned for Prior Lake has been put on hold, and may fall apart, because November's failed school district vote means the Prior Lake-Savage district can't afford the money it pledged to operate the center.

The $1.6 million "Interpretive Center," planned for city land adjacent to Jeffers Pond Elementary, is a collaboration between the city, the school district and the Jeffers Foundation, an environmental foundation based in Wayzata.

The money for construction has already been gathered: $1.12 million from the foundation, $280,000 from the city and $200,000 from the school district to furnish and equip the building. What is at issue is the estimated $20,000 to $30,000 needed annually to run the center, which the school district now can't provide.

"We don't have the dollars to do it," said school Superintendent Tom Westerhaus, whose district is preparing for more than $1 million in budget cuts for the 2008-09 school year. "We just don't have the dollars to operate the center."

On Saturday, the Jeffers Foundation board is going to consider pulling back a large chunk of the devoted funding, essentially killing the project in its current form.

"It doesn't mean it won't happen," said Prior Lake city manager Frank Boyles. "It would just be in a different format."

Emphasis on education

The city has until 2011 to use the money, but Jeffers Foundation CEO Paul Oberg grew frustrated waiting and tried to speed up the process by offering an additional $620,000 for the project, with the condition that 8 acres of city land next to another school be put under a conservation easement, which means it can't be developed.

That $620,000 is the money that the foundation is considering taking back: The amount is about equal to the money the foundation plans on giving away this year, according to Oberg. And he said that the foundation can better invest it in other projects with more statewide impact.

For several years, the Prior Lake-Savage district has put a strong emphasis on environmental education and has even included it in the district's strategic plan. The district is in the third year of a five-year agreement with the Jeffers Foundation, with the foundation providing at least $150,000 a year for school environmental programming.

But Oberg said that the foundation won't step in with any more money to help operate the center.

"Enough is enough," he said. "I'm not going to give any more."

The Jeffers Foundation also offered the city of Savage a $500,000 matching grant for an environmental center there, provided the city put two plots of land under conservation easement for the use of schools.

But the process in Savage has gone more smoothly, which means the city plans to start construction on the $1.5 million center this spring and open it as early as this fall. Most of the money the city is spending on the center is coming from its park reserve fund.

For Oberg, who has frequently been frustrated by the progress of the Prior Lake project, the hold on the project is disappointing.

"But the bottom line is, it's truly nobody's fault that the Prior Lake building can't be built," he said. "I would very much like to have it done in Prior Lake, but it isn't the way that the thing is going down."