82SiouxGuy

Quote is from http://education.und.edu/teacher-ed.cfm. That was more than 6 years before the state of North Dakota was created, and both Mayville and Valley City were created in the North Dakota Constitution. So I don't think anyone at either Mayville or Valley City were complaining too much since UND had education programs before the other schools were even created.

That is part of my point. The girls game isn't nearly at the same level as boys hockey in North Dakota. The coaches can be productive by attending boys games. They probably aren't going to get a lot out of attending girls high school games. They are better off going to catch the best North Dakota players at camps or other outside competition. The hockey coaches put in a lot of time during the season, both working on coaching the team and traveling for recruiting. Expecting them to attend games just to be seen would have to be added to the rest of their schedule. I would rather have them concentrate on making the team better, and let them decide when they are going to watch individual players.

In boys hockey, how many high school players from North Dakota are recruited by UND? Not very many. And North Dakota boys high school hockey has been around for more than 50 years. Who are the only ones that get recruited by UND? The complete studs. How is that any different from what you describe for the girls? What do the top high school players from North Dakota and Minnesota do on a regular basis to get noticed and get better? They leave school and go to play on Jr. teams like in the USHL. The coaches go to hundreds of games every year. You think they should go to more games just to be seen. Do you know for sure that they never attend any high school games in North Dakota? Maybe people just don't see them. If a coach is attending a game, or even part of a game, they are there to scout players and not to be seen. Maybe the coaches have decided that it is more efficient to watch the top players play against other top players. Even if there was a single top player playing in a high school game, what is a coach going to learn by watching them play against a lower class of competition? It is difficult to learn how good a player can be if they are playing against weak competition. It is kind of a waste of time to try and evaluate a player under those conditions. It is a better use of the coaches time to scout those players if they are playing in a higher level of competition. With all of the time that the coaches put in during the season, it is unreasonable to want them to go to more games just to be seen, if they don't have a really good reason to be at that game.

I will continue to wear Fighting Sioux stuff. I will purchase and wear clothing with a new nickname and logo. I may even purchase and wear merchandise that just says North Dakota. I support the University of North Dakota, with whatever name and logo they use.

Slap Shot is still open. They moved up to Gateway where Happy Harry's was years ago (and I think Domino's was there for a while). They have Fat Albert's Subs, too.

That was spelled out in the legislation. The Vikings are very strongly considering the retractable option because it would make the building more appealing. If it comes in around $40,000,000 I think they will do it.

The problem may not be the amount of money available, it will be the attitudes of the citizens. There is a significant size group that doesn't like the government spending money. And that group keeps electing the government officials. That is going to have to change before they will start spending money on what they would consider "frills". Much of that group also hates higher education. They don't even want to pay for classrooms, they aren't going to buy stadiums any time soon. But I hope that the attitudes change, especially if the state does continue to be very successful.

The $40,000,000 that the Vikings are looking at is to change from a regular roof to a retractable roof. In other words, that's the extra cost to make the roof open. To go from no roof to retractable roof is going to add at least $100,000,000. Besides the roof, the rest of the stadium would have to be made stronger to support the roof. I completely understand that the capacity is not directly related to cost. I just tried to use TCF as an example because it was regional and recent. I could have used the $1,000,000,000 that the Vikings stadium is going to cost, but that is a totally different animal. But it makes it easier to illustrate a point if you can use facilities that people can understand. It is possible that an outdoor stadium could be done for under $100,000,000. It would probably cost more than the North Texas stadium because of increasing construction costs, and because of building in a more northern climate. But the real cost would be having the roof, especially a retractable roof. That is going to push the cost over $200,000,000. It also makes the facility much more usable. You can build anything from a Yugo to a Ferrari, it just depends on how much you are willing to put into it. But you can't deny that putting a retractable roof on a stadium is going to add a huge cost compared to a stadium without a roof. And the discussion in this thread has included having a retractable roof. And by the way, North Dakota has so far refused to pay for any athletic facilities at the large colleges for at least 40 years so no one is going to hold their breath waiting for the state to pay for any part of a stadium.

The construction will begin on Altru within 2 or 3 years at the latest. It will be completed in 15 years or less. The last plans I've heard include the hospital being among the first to be replaced because they are short of procedure and operating space. Also, people really want single rooms so they want to get new patient rooms as soon as possible. Then they will move on to clinic space. You say you want competition, yet you would have preferred to have Sanford buy out Altru. That would have left no competition. Sanford is trying to buy out all of the competition in the region. Innovis will be a minor player in Fargo if Sanford has anything to do with it, and compared to Sanford they already are. And Sanford looks at Altru as competition. That's why they would like to buy out Altru. Do you think Sanford would have cared about Grand Forks at all if they have Sioux Falls and Fargo as their main locations, and Bismarck as a 3rd. They would have tried to funnel as much as possible to Fargo rather than treat here in Grand Forks. Your options for being treated in Grand Forks may have decreased if Sanford had purchased Altru. And if you want to be treated by Sanford you can go to the clinic in East Grand Forks or the hospital in Fargo. Nothing is stopping you. There is plenty of competition for medical treatment in the Red River Valley.

UND has had some other issues getting in the way of fund raising the past few years, especially for athletics. In spite of that the school is well on the way to completing the Foundation's fundraising goal. UND has several other very wealthy donors that have shown at least some interest in helping with some major projects. I don't know when, or even if, they will make the donations, but they certainly have the ability and potentially some interest. Major fundraising isn't as easy, or as cut and dried as you and your pals at Bville seem to believe. It is a delicate and time-consuming process. Donors give on their own schedule, and for their own reasons. It takes a great deal of patience. Major donations usually take years to ferment. They don't happen overnight.

And you are now an expert on UND football donors. It is amazing the things that you think you know.

Altru will be building all new facilities over the next 10-15 years. They are going to replace the hospital and all the clinic buildings on the main campus. The hospital will be significantly larger (but not nearly as big as what Sanford is doing in Fargo). I would prefer to have an independent medical provider in Grand Forks that has an affiliation with Mayo rather than have Sanford be the only significant provider between Omaha and the Canadian border and between Minneapolis and Billings. Sanford isn't perfect and they have plenty of their own issues to deal with.

TCF Bank stadium cost $300,000,000 to build a few years ago. The cost would be another $30-40,000,000 if they started now. It seats just over 50,000. Cut the building in half and it would cost more than $150,000,000 without a roof. Add $100,000,000 for a roof. A college football roof isn't going to cost much less than a pro football roof, the roof still has to operate and hold snow. Maybe cut it in half if it is a regular dome and not retractable.. But it is going to be over $200,000,000 if they started now, and probably over $300,000,000 if they start it in 10-12 years.

The number would probably be 3 to 4 times that, at least. Probably between $2-300,000,000. The retractable roof they are looking at for the Vikings stadium is expected to cost more than $100,000,000 for just the roof. There is an entire conversation about the topic in this thread. Some preliminary plans were drawn up as a part of a master plan. A couple of different versions were included in this thread. Some potential donors have been discussed. None of this is planned for sure, and much of the stadium plan is basically a dream at this point. But the point of the master plan was to have something available in case the dream has a chance of coming true in the future.

A marketing study was done several years ago in Grand Forks about ticket purchasing. It was aimed at arts events, but also applied to sporting events. One of the things they found was that most ticket buying decisions for events came during the week before the event. People in the area are very much late purchasers. Advertising too early can be a waste of advertising dollars. The biggest exception to the rule is if people think the event will sell out. The obvious example is UND hockey. The other group that is an exception are the hard-core fans, and people that know they want a specific seat or section. Then they buy tickets early. People know when football season is coming. A strong, concentrated marketing campaign can be as effective, or more effective, than a longer campaign. Just because NDSU has been out there already doesn't mean that UND can't do a great job selling tickets even if they start later.

And now it should be "Central" Forks, the place is probably about the middle of Grand Forks.

Sears moved out to the South Forks Plaza, which was on the edge of town, several years before they built West Acres. Actually, Kmart opened early in 1964 and Sears later that year. Both stores had wings with other stores attached, some of them in an enclosed mall type setting. Rydells was in its present location, but otherwise there wasn't much except fields south and west. Red River was built a few years later in the middle of a field. They enclosed the space between Kmart and Sears and opened that part as an enclosed mall in 1973. They added a wing to the mall in 1977. Columbia Mall opened in July of 1978. Columbia Mall was built almost a mile from anything else. So Grand Forks wasn't really that far behind Fargo in developing new shopping regions and moving out of downtown.

I've heard almost all good about Dickies in Grand Forks. One person didn't like it, the rest have all liked it. One other person complained about the wait, but it was the first week so I take that with a grain of salt. I haven't been there yet.

The discussion of the WAC and the Big Sky merging didn't include football. In this discussion, all schools would remain in the Big Sky and FCS for football. None of the Big Sky schools, including the Montanas and UND, are ready for FBS. The general idea was to position the schools with FBS aspirations in a conference that could allow them to move up in the future. The idea being discussed in this thread included Idaho and New Mexico State remaining as independent FBS schools for a while, until the other schools are ready to move up. The idea that some Southeastern schools are going to join the WAC is a totally different discussion.

There are a lot of people in the Grand Forks area that call UND the U. As I said, a lot of people will call their local University the U.

A lot of Universities are called the "U" in their local area. Not going to work for UND on a national level.

College football was much different back in previous times. For instance, during the 1960's and early 70's there was no Division I (FBS), I-A (FCS) and II. There was the University Division, which was a smaller version of the current DI, and the College Division, which was basically FCS and DII combined. UND and NDSU played at the top of the College Division during a lot of that time. They had 4 regional bowl games for the College Division and a national champion was chosen by poll from the winners. UND won bowl games in 1966 and 1972, but weren't chosen as the National Champions. This was the equivalent to playing in the FCS quarterfinals and winning. These were very talented and accomplished teams. Check the UND record books, some of these players still hold high positions in the record books, including Mike Deutsch holding the single season record for rushing touchdowns with 26 in 1972, 10 more than the next closest. The other point that always needs to be considered is the difference in size, strength, etc. between current players and players from different eras. It would be hard to argue that players from the 60's and 70's were bigger and stronger. But if you are looking purely at talent, I think it is easy to make the argument that the 1966 and 1972 teams could have been more talented than this year's team. Those teams accomplished what this team aspires to accomplish. There are probably other teams that could be put into the discussion also.

It's about a 2 hour drive, depending on traffic. My guess is that later Friday evening might not be terrible. Rental car will probably cost you around $150 plus a tank of gas or so.

You are correct, 47th is 2 miles north of Merrifield Road (County 6). As of right now I don't think they are taking a serious look at 62nd, probably because there are no immediate needs at that location. 47th would serve a potential outlet mall and a growing section of town. Merrifield Road would serve the ag community and be a safety measure to remove a large amount of truck traffic from the community. As a compromise, I don't know if 62nd would serve either need well enough to be a great location. If they are going to put a south bridge over the Red River, County Road 6 is by far the best location for that. My guess is that they will look for a way to do the County Road 6 intersection soon and possibly start with some kind of frontage road for an outlet mall at 47th to start, then add an intersection there in another 5-10 years.

The demographics of Grand Forks haven't shifted away from the 32nd Street store. That corridor is going to remain the shopping hub of Grand Forks for a while. Closing that store would be a huge mistake, not the kind of mistake that Walmart makes. A Gateway Drive store would be to siphon off some of the Canadian and northern tier shoppers that don't really want to deal with the hassles of 32nd Street. My guess is that they are trying to steal some of the Target/Best Buy customers that may not like the traffic and crowds. Gateway Drive is never going to become the major shopping hub of Grand Forks.