Collaboration carries risks

Star Tribune Fri, 15 Feb 2008 05:42:12 GMT
Nature center may be nipped in the bud

Promised money was withdrawn for an environmental learning center planned for Jeffers Pond. An environmental learning center planned for the city of Prior Lake was dealt a fatal blow after a foundation in Wayzata pulled back a large part of the promised funding for the project. Jeffers Foundation CEO Paul Oberg told the city of Prior Lake and the Prior Lake-Savage school district that it would take back $620,000 of the total $1.12 million it had devoted to the project, since it was impossible to tell when the building would actually be built. The $1.6 million "interpretive center," planned for city land adjacent to Jeffers Pond Elementary, would have been a collaboration between the environmental foundation, the city and the school district. But the project was put on hold after a school district referendum failed in November, so the district can't afford the money it pledged to operate the center.

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