Strange things are afoot…

As I’m sweeping up the lot the other day, I noticed these pink lines drawn on the parking lot and the grass.  Later I was talking to the manager, who also happens to be the owner’s son-in-law, and he told me about plans Westminster College had for the area.

It seems that the college is growing out of it’s britches – no more room on campus for dorms and (affordable) local housing at capacity they were losing students who didn’t want to commute from out in Sandy. So they decided they needed a dorm close by.  They bought the building right next to the Chevron for the 4 storey dorm building, and got the Homestead Inn to sell them the east most part of their parking lot for a multi-level parking structure.  Their big problem was that Chevron owns the 50’ strip of land separating the two pieces of property they just bought.

It’s going to work out good for the store, we get rid of a big chunk of property that is essentially useless to the business, and trade it for the same sized piece that will allow us to widen the area in front of the store, where customers will use it.

They were supposed to start breaking ground on the project back in the middle of May, but Westminster started negotiating as if they had the advantage.  Their original offer had Chevron giving up more land that they would be getting, and the owner had to explain to them that, although it will be nice once the front is widened, we are already functioning fine the way things are and Westminster can’t do their project without that little slice of property.  So Westminster came back with a better offer, Chevron said the swap had to be foot-for-foot, Westminster came back with a little bit better offer, Chevron said the swap had to be foot-for-foot, and it’s been going back and forth that way for a month now.

So the latest projection is that groundbreaking will be in August.  Early August I hope, because I want to be out of school when they demolish the building.  And if I’m there when it happens, you’ll see it here.