Category: Sponsors

Newly appointed Utah Tech University President Shane Smeed’s first day on the job — May 1 — happened on the same day as the school’s annual graduation ceremony.

“So my very first day was a commencement — and on my second day, we had three additional commencement ceremonies,” Smeed recently told the Deseret News editorial board.

“So within the first 48 hours of me serving as president, we had the fortunate opportunity to be able to celebrate some of the most exciting days in the lives of our students and their families.”

Smeed’s enthusiasm to be sharing his personal achievements with those of the UTU student body, simultaneously, seems apropos at a moment of historic change — both within the UTU community and across Utah’s higher education system.

Perhaps none of the state’s degree-granting public institutions has experienced the level of growth in recent years as UTU.

During the 2000s, the school originally known as the St. George Stake Academy went from being Dixie State College to Dixie State University and now, since 2022, Utah Tech University.

Even the school mascot has evolved: Rebels to Red Storm to Trailblazers.

Meanwhile, UTU’s enrollment has grown every year since 2013, increasing by almost 60% to over 13,000 students today. Of the school’s 304 academic programs, 60% have been developed within the past seven years.

One reason why UTU has become a popular higher ed destination for many Utahns — 82% are in-state students — is obvious: It’s the most affordable university in the state.

But the school’s 19th president believes UTU’s opportunities extend beyond affordability and program growth.

While some in Utah’s public higher education system view recent legislation demanding budget reallocations as a hostile act against traditional learning, Smeed sees opportunities.

HB265, he counters, “allows us to reinvest money in the places where we think can be impactful — not only in (students’) educational experience, but also in the workforce and preparing them to meet workforce needs and its requirements.”

Additionally, Smeed is anxious to reconnect with members of the UTU community who may have separated themselves from the school. UTU, he said, is their asset.

“It’s an asset for the state. It’s an asset for the community and (Washington County). I see my role as president as every bit ‘externally facing’ as internal — so it’s a great opportunity.”

Prior to Smeed’s hiring, UTU was without a president for over a year after President Richard “Biff” Williams stepped down from the position. Williams, who now serves as president of Missouri State University, was included as a defendant in an ongoing lawsuit alleging Title IX violations in the wake of a vulgar prank.

When asked if those divisive investigations have harmed UTU’s reputation, Smeed said his new job offers him the opportunity to be “a spokesperson for the university” going forward.

“Reputationally, our community will see that our students are probably the best representation of who we are as a university.”

UTU’s polytechnic mission: Preparing grads for the workforce

A Utah native, Smeed served for almost four years as the president of Missouri’s Park University, where he championed education/workforce readiness and expanding the Park campus for military-affiliated students.

He and his wife, Angela, are the parents of three children.

Smeed presided over Park University while also serving as the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Platte City Missouri Stake.

While going through the UTU job application process and meeting with Utah’s higher education leaders and members of the Washington County community, “I realized that this was a special place,” he said.

“I was born in Provo, Utah — so this was a great opportunity for me to come back to my home state.”

As an academic, Smeed said he was drawn to UTU’s polytechnic mission. “I believe that it most readily prepares our graduates to meet the workforce needs.”

So why should Utah students choose to attend UTU?

The Beehive State offers a variety of colleges and universities, both public and private, that are relatively affordable and boast a wide range of academic programs.

Smeed is confident that UTU — an open-enrollment institution — is a campus where Utahns can thrive academically, while saving a few bucks at the state’s most affordable university.

“There’s been a big question about whether or not the value of higher education is still there today — but the facts show that a person with a college degree will earn $1.2 million (over one’s lifetime) more than one with just a high school diploma,” he said.

“So if you’re from Washington County, you can expect to make $20,000 more annually than someone who only has a high school diploma.”

Smeed also highlights UTU’s campus growth over the past decade that has transformed the campus. He’s committed to building relationships with the philanthropic community to raise funds and secure scholarships.

Such efforts, said Smeed, will allow UTU students “to graduate with less debt, or no debt, by the time they’re finishing their education — especially for those that are looking for opportunities with internships.

“And then they’re ready to hit the job force and really help with workforce development.”

Historic campus growth; evolving higher ed priorities

Smeed noted that UTU is evolving in real-time even as Washington County’s population booms.

A new performing arts center and a general classroom building are under construction on campus — and a new residence hall was recently completed.

Expect such growth markers and physical footprints to increase in the coming years, he said.

“The growth that’s happening in St. George in Washington County is a tremendous opportunity for us to attract more students from Washington County and within the state,” Smeed said, noting that more than half of the school’s students come from inside the county.

While some have been alarmed by the budget reallocation demands placed on Utah’s public colleges and universities by HB265, Smeed sees the new legislation as an opportunity to better educate and prepare students.

The state-mandated reallocations happening at Utah campuses should not be viewed as cuts — but, rather, reinvestments that will serve graduates well in the coming decades.

“Through our reinvestment plan, we’re looking to add approximately a dozen additional faculty lines to our university.”

UTU’s new president says he is already focused on building relationships with his new faculty.

“My commitment to them is to listen to their concerns and opportunities,” he said. “They’ll see me as a strategic partner — one that can understand the needs of the faculty but can also understand the broader needs of the university.

“My actions will speak louder than my words.”

Smeed is also reassuring UTU students that liberal arts studies and the humanities “aren’t going anywhere.”

Still, there might be opportunities to examine traditional programs and decide if there are ways to incorporate, say, new technologies to make them more applicable for today’s job market.

Smeed’s guiding administrative question: “How can we more strategically place some of those programs in a position where students can graduate, find gainful employment and be able to meet workforce needs, now and then throughout the 21st century?”

‘Trailblazer Nation’: UTU’s athletic future

Varsity sports at UTU made a historic leap last year to NCAA Division I competition.

Most of the Trailblazer teams are competing in the Western Athletic Conference, while the gridiron program is part of the Football Championship Subdivision.

College sports, of course, have undergone historic disruptions in recent years with the emergence of NIL and the transfer portal for athletes.

Given those recent changes, it will take “a bit of time” to build up the school’s athletic program to where it wants to be, said Smeed.

But UTU students and fans can still expect to support competitive teams. Everybody loves a winner.

“So we’re only going to continue to put investment into our athletic programs,” said Smeed.

“We can’t rely on student-athletes to come here without some level of incentive, and so fundraising is a big part of my role as president of the university to find ways to connect with the community, connect with corporate partners and the business community alike, and find ways where they’re interested in supporting athletics.”

UTU’s goal, he added, is to “fill the stadium and fill the arena.”

Has Bronco Mendenhall found a home?

Utah State has had a rough run, and it needs Mendenhall to work his magic as soon as humanly possible.

The program won ten or more games four times in the last 13 seasons – the only double-digit campaigns in Utah State history – and going to bowl games has become the norm.

But three straight losing seasons, and the firing of head coach Blake Anderson just before last year started, made 2024 impossible to turn things back around.

But Mendenhall is used to this. He was great right away at BYU for 12 seasons before running off for the Virginia job. In Year Four, he took the Cavaliers to the Orange Bowl. After taking three years off, he resurfaced in New Mexico, taking over and winning five games with one of the best offenses in the nation.

Utah State might need a little bit. Mendenhall knows what he’s doing, but close to 30 players transferred out, the portal didn’t fill in enough gaps, and this whole thing will be put together with duct tape and a few prayers.

But there’s enough in place to potentially match the four wins of last season. And because it’s Mendenhall, it should be fun regardless of the first year record.

Utah State Aggies College Football Preview 2025

Utah State Aggies Preview 2025: Offense

X CFN, Fiu | CFN Facebook | Bluesky Fiu, CFN

– Bronco Mendenhall isn’t quite bringing over the New Mexico offense that finished fourth in the nation, but he’ll give it a shot. Coordinator Kevin McGiven spent the last several years making the San Jose State offense go. Offense wasn’t a problem for Utah State, finishing sixth in the nation, averaging 468 yards and 32 points per game, but …

– Leading passer Spencer Petras is done, but Bryson Barnes threw 12 touchdown passes and got in enough work last year and at Utah to be ready for the gig. His 348 rushing yards over the last two games might be a glimpse of what’s to come in the Mendenhall attack. However, Arizona transfer Anthony Garcia will get every shot in fall camp.

Advertisement

– Jalen Royals was a special receiver who’ll be a big deal for the Kansas City Chiefs. The transfer portal needs to pick up the slack with Corey Thompson (UNLV), Brady Boyd (Texas Tech), and Demick Starling (WKU) all relatively untested options who’ll get every shot.

– The line isn’t totally starting over, but all five starters will be replaced. Jake Eichorn (BYU) will come in through the transfer portal, and there’s a little experience to play around with.

The job will be to crank up the running game, and it won’t just be Barnes. Miles Davis (BYU) and Javen Jacobs (New Mexico) are quick backs who should each average over five yards per carry.

Utah State Aggies Preview 2025: Defense

– The defense couldn’t do much of anything, even with all the help coming from the strong Aggie offense. The D had a nice pass rush, but it allowed 470 yards and 38 points per game. Defensive coordinator Nick Howell is still around, and …

– The Aggies might have the best safety in the Mountain West. Ike Larsen is back after making 217 tackles, nine picks, and 17 broken up passes over the last three years.

Omari Okeke and transfer Bobby Arnold (New Mexico) will step in at the other slots. The corners might be even better, with Bryson Taylor and Noah Avinger two big-play parts of last year’s New Mexico secondary.

– Top pass rusher Cian Slone is gone to NC State, but Bronson Olevao Jr. is back at one linebacker spot – he was second on the team with 3.5 sacks and 23 tackles – and John Miller should be a bigger tackler in the middle coming off a 52-tackle season.

– The line doesn’t have a ton of experience with Slone gone on one end, but Gabriel Iniguez is a decent run stopper inside, Bo Maile can play inside or as a 3-4 end, and the transfer portal will help with tackle Tyree Morris (Lafayette) an instant starter.

Utah State Aggies Key to the Season

Be way, way better against the run.
The Aggies allowed 5.4 yards per carry and got hammered over 200 yards in seven games.

It’s way, way too tough to hold up when the team is getting crushed in the time of possession battle, and in this way, the offense has to control the clock a bit better. But it’s been years since the program has consistently stopped the run.

Utah State Aggies Key Player

Tyree Morris, DT Jr.
Again, the run defense must be more than just a speed bump. The 6-6, 273-pound Morris might not be huge, but he’s active. He made 65 tackles, two sacks, and five tackles for loss last year for the Leopards, and now he has to be a disruptive force.

Utah State Aggies Top Transfer, Biggest Transfer Loss

Top Transfer In: Noah Avinger, CB Sr.
If it’s not Morris, and if it’s not fellow former Lobo defensive back Bryson Taylor, it’s Avinger, a strong-tackling option for any defensive back spot.

He started out at San Diego State, missed the 2023 season, and then stepped in at corner for New Mexico and stopped everything the porous defensive front didn’t, coming up with 91 tackles and five broken up passes.

Top Transfer Out: Rahsul Faison, RB Sr.
The Aggies have other options at running back and should be okay, but the 5-11, 200-pound Faison would’ve rolled in this new offense. He wasn’t bad in the old one, running for 1,845 yards and 13 touchdowns in two seasons. Now he’s at South Carolina.

Utah State Aggies Key Game

at New Mexico, Oct. 25
No one’s expecting a College Football Playoff national title out of the Aggies, but there are games you can lose, and games you can’t. Bronco Mendenhall losing to the Lobos after his one-and-done era in Albuquerque is one of those the Aggies shouldn’t drop.
– 2025 Utah State Schedule Breakdown

Utah State Aggies Top 10 Players

1. Ike Larsen, S Sr.
2. Noah Avinger, CB Sr.
3. Bryson Barnes, QB Sr.
4. Bryson Taylor, CB Sr.
5. John Miller, LB Sr.
6. Bronson Olevao Jr., LB Jr.
7. Tyree Morris, DT Jr.
8. Miles Davis, RB Sr.
9. Gabriel Iniguez, DT Sr.
10. Omari Okeke, S Sr.

Utah State Aggies 2024 Fun Stats

– 2nd Quarter Scoring: Opponents 186, Utah State 89

– Field Goals: Opponents 20-of-22, Utah State 10-of-16

– Time of Possession: Opponents 32:41, Utah State 27:19

Utah State Aggies 2025 Season Prediction, Win Total, What Will Happen

It’s Bronco Mendenhall, and while that will only go so far on a team that returns four starters and lost just about everyone of note through the transfer portal, he should have the team ready and good enough to at least push for the four wins of last season.

It’s not an awful deal to miss Colorado State, San Diego State, and Wyoming, but it would’ve been nice to miss Boise State, or UNLV, or Fresno State. Making things worse, there’s a trip to Hawaii kicking off a run of four road games in six dates.

The Aggies will beat McNeese and slip by UTEP in the opener. It’ll pull off at least one other Mountain West game – at New Mexico and home against Nevada are most likely – but this is a true rebuilding campaign.

Set The Utah State Aggies Win Total At … 3.5

Likely Wins: McNeese

50/50 Games: Air Force, at Hawaii, Nevada, at New Mexico, San Jose State, UTEP

Likely Losses: Boise State, at Fresno State, at Texas A&M, at UNLV, at Vanderbilt

Utah Utes College Football Preview 2025

X CFN, Fiu | CFN Facebook | Bluesky Fiu, CFN
 
Utah Offense Breakdown
Utah Defense Breakdown
Season Prediction, Win Total, Keys to Season

After a wildly disappointing year, the Utes are about to explode. 2025 Utah season preview with breakdowns, top players and transfers, keys to the season, what will happen, and projected win total.

Almost everyone has an off year.

Advertisement

As good as Utah has been under head coach Kyle Whittingham, it’s not Ohio State, or Alabama, or at the elite of elite programs – it has yet to make the College Football Playoff.

The margin for error is just small enough that something like not having the quarterback situation fully settled can be the difference between blah and fantastic.

Six quarterbacks. That’s how many threw at least 30 passes for Utah over the last two seasons; there wasn’t any continuity to the offense, and that was just enough to go from 2022 Pac-12 champion level to 13-12 over the last two seasons.

Overall, the program is good enough to be dominant in the Big 12, but last year, thanks to that offense, the Utes lost four games by six points or fewer, lost at Arizona State by eight, and didn’t have their mojo in the other two losses.

Utah has gone 2-7 in its last nine games decided by one score. That’s about to change.

And now everyone is about to underestimate the Utes.

Yes, the Big 12 is tough from top to bottom, but no, it’s not better at the higher end than the Pac-12 was before it self-imploded.

Yes, Utah – the program that was a mortal lock in bowl games with a 14-1 record from 1999 to 2017 – hasn’t won a bowl game in seven years.

And yes, Utah has made the pivot to change all of that.

The Big 12 is winnable, and Utah is the team to do it if New Mexico transfer quarterback Devon Dampier – who comes with former Lobo offensive coordinator Jason Beck, and a few other parts – can bring that same firepower from last year’s attack to Salt Lake City.

A conference championship, a trip to the College Football Playoff, and doing some damage once it gets there. This Utah team should be good enough to do it all.

Utah Offense Breakdown
Utah Defense Breakdown
Season Prediction, Win Total, Keys to Season

Last year, Utah launched Gov. Spencer Cox’s novel plan, making some $300 million in public funds available for low-interest loans to encourage developers to build more affordable homes for first-time buyers.

But just $10.7 million has been transferred from the fund, in February for a Nilson Homes project just outside Plain City, Weber County, according to the Utah State Treasurer’s office. The first dozen of what eventually will be 275 homes priced below $450,000 have been built and sold.

It‘s a slow start toward meeting the governor’s goal of 35,000 more starter homes by 2028.

So the 2025 Legislature quietly made a change to the program that allows for a new type of affordable housing in addition to the traditional single-family house to be built with money from the funds set aside.

Starter condominiums.

“They’re the natural entry point into the housing market,” said Steve Waldrip, a former state lawmaker and the first to fill the recently created role of senior adviser for housing strategy and innovation to the governor.

The apartment-like, multistory housing can be much less expensive than a single-family home and, Waldrip said, allow developers to take advantage of smaller and odd-sized lots, particularly around public transit stations.

“The governor has been very vocal about wanting single-family homes to be the priority of the administration. So we’ve done and are doing things in that arena. But there are places where you just can’t do that,” he said.

Say there’s 2 acres available to develop. Instead of building just a couple of houses, Waldrip said, “you could do 50 condos, or 100 condos. You get ownership in both instances. But because of the volume benefit of the condo process, they come a lot cheaper.”

Although many communities have balked at high-density development, he said they “are much more amenable to condos than apartments because you have that ownership component. It provides much more housing stability.”

In Utah and the rest of the country, though, there’s been little interest in building lower-priced condos for years because of costly insurance and regulatory issues, he said. Such projects are seen as offering a lower reward for a much higher financial risk than building apartments.

Utah lawmakers have taken steps to remove some of the roadblocks but there’s more to be done. Last session’s legislation also extended the availability of funding for building starter homes and now condos for an additional year, until 2028.

Waldrip said the state is working to create a Utah-specific construction defects insurance policy to counter premiums that can be four times higher for condo than apartment development because of regional pricing.

While that might take more legislation, he doesn’t see it as a “show-stopper” for the administration’s new push for starter condos, especially since a larger financing issue was resolved by allowing the nonprofit Utah Housing Corporation to make loans, just as banks have.

That change in the law, slipped into a larger housing bill after being successfully pitched to the Legislature’s closed-door caucuses last session, is a way around federal regulations requiring 50% of a condo project to be sold before FHA loans that first-time buyers rely on are available.

“We’re just talking about taking some of the risk away from condo development,” Waldrip said. “What have we been building? Apartments. We’ve been building apartment after apartment after apartment. … We have all these built-in disincentives to creating condos.”

So will that be enough to get apartment developers to shift to condos?

Waldrip believes it is. He said the changes being made to the starter home program are in response to a developer who came to the state for help making the switch, Tom Henriod, a partner in the Holladay-based Rockworth Companies that develops projects throughout the West.

“That was the beginning of the discussion of how to create this condo project,” Waldrip said.

Henriod’s detailed proposal from late last year for “Advancing Affordable Condominium Development in Utah” fills the front and back of a single sheet of paper. It spells out that the supply of affordable homes “is nearly nonexistent,” so more and more households remain renters.

There’s also a warning about the “(w)idening wealth gap between owners and renters fostering greater class distinction, discord between classes and increased risk of societal unrest,” noting that the government‘s solution is usually to subsidize rental units for low-income residents.

“We’re not trying to be alarmist … but we mean it,” Henriod said, making a point to single out that statement in his proposal. “We need people to feel like they have ownership in their community, literally.”

How a starter condo program could work

Condo units could be built for $350,000 or less and sold at or near cost to lower-income buyers, Henriod said. Developers would be paid a yet-to-be determined fee of maybe 10% of the project‘s overall cost, he said, similar to what they get for building subsidized apartments.

What‘s not sustainable in his mind is continuing to build multifamily housing only for renters.

“There should be a large contingent of it that‘s for sale,” said Henriod, who has built thousands of apartment units over the years. “This idea is really borne from that thought, that we need more for-sale housing at smaller purchase prices, period.”

But his last condo project, near Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, was some 15 years ago. The challenges of building multiple units sold to individual buyers versus an apartment complex with a single owner are just too steep for developers, Henriod said.

“I‘ve got better tax options if I do apartments. I‘ve got liability issues that exist with the condos that don’t exist with apartments. It‘s so much easier for me to get financing and I don’t have to worry about figuring out how my buyers of all these individual condos can get financing,” he said.

Those issues have led developers to say “why bother” building something sold as a “box in the air” with a fractional interest in shared parts of a building, Henriod said. “It‘s tough. It‘s super tough. There’s a lot of reasons why no one has been doing this.”

A mortgage payment on an affordable condo may actually be a little less than the nearly $2,000 typical rent for a two-bedroom apartment, he said, allowing the owner to build equity estimated to be valued at $158,000 over a decade.

“It‘s not rocket science,” said Henriod, a father of four children ages 10 to 21. “I‘m thinking about my kids and what are they going to buy. I‘d like them to be able to buy something, gain equity and get into a move-up market. I think that‘s what the American dream really is.”

Nothing’s planned yet, but the company’s already scouting property, including in Cottonwood Heights, Salt Lake City, Ogden, Spanish Fork and Murray. Henriod said he’s just waiting for the state to come out with specifics of the starter condo program.

“Hopefully soon,” he said, adding the company would love to be able get started in the next year or so since it takes at least three to four years to secure the necessary permits and then build a 200-unit complex.

‘We don’t want them to make too much’

It‘s the Utah Housing Corporation that will fund condo projects from the state monies set aside for starter homes once the details of the program are in place. Just how long that‘s going to take remains to be seen.

“We make no promises,” said David Damschen, who served as Utah state treasurer before becoming president and CEO of the nonprofit agency created some 50 years ago. “We’re moving as quickly as we can. … We’re not messing around.”

The hope is that Utah Housing Corporation’s new role in the governor’s starter home program as a lender to developers will be fairly well defined by late summer, he said. A new hire has already been made to help with what will be a significant expansion of the agency’s construction financing.

“Obviously, we’re very subject to how things unfold. We’re spending a lot of time with the developer community as well as legal counsel, making sure we understand the sources of risk, making sure we understand how the incentives will be viewed,” Damschen said.

If the new program “doesn’t work for developers to do really great work, produce high-quality, affordable units, it‘s not a good program. So we have to strike a delicate balance,” he said, between the risk of financing condo construction and the reward of more affordable housing.

Claudia O’Grady, vice president of Utah Housing Corporation’s Multifamily Finance Department, said it‘s possible there could be units for sale as soon as next year. She said she’s been hearing from developers interested in converting existing apartment projects into condos.

“If it can get done in a manner that meets our program requirements, and our objectives of affordability, a quality product at affordable, entry-level prices, we’re going to entertain those applications,” O’Grady said.

She said the condo projects would be fee-based to incentivize developers to participate and hopefully allow the units to be sold at cost, although the “finer points” of that model still need to be worked out. That includes the size of the fee paid to developers.

“Yes, there’s profit in it,” Damschen said. “We don’t want to let them make too much.”

For buyers, for now the intention is to require owner occupancy for at least five years. Income limits are also being discussed, but Damschen said there’s value in keeping it simple for Utahns seeking to become homeowners.

“You can overcomplicate programs such that they’re not as appealing either to developers or to homebuyers, or mortgage lenders. So there’s a focus on simplicity. There’s a focus on the cost,” he said, noting down payment assistance would be available to first-time buyers.

Damschen believes the starter condos will be welcomed.

“It‘s not really single-family homes versus condos. It‘s apartments, rental apartments, versus condos. That‘s really where the initiative stemmed from, was generally, cities are more interested in … housing units that provide home ownership opportunities,” he said.

At the same time, making the transition from renter to owner by purchasing a single-family home is often out of reach for Utahns.

“Increasingly, single-family detached homes at $400,000, $450,000, $500,000 are not affordable to first-time homebuyers,” Damschen said. “But for a lot of folks buying their first home, a condo at $300,000 will do the trick.”

What homebuilders say about the affordable housing gap

Utah‘s largest homebuilder, Ivory Homes, backs the governor’s efforts. Chris Gamvroulas, president of Ivory Development, said the starter home program was initially geared to small- and medium-sized builders.

Asked if Ivory was interested in building starter condos, he said “we have so many other projects that are in our pipeline already that for us, it wouldn’t make sense. But I know there’s a lot of builders that are looking into it now and are hopeful that it can bridge the gap.”

Gamvroulas said high-density housing that for sale could enable more Utahns to earn equity rather than paying rent. Over time, he said, they could sell their unit and buy a single-family home like the ones Ivory builds.

“We’re homebuilders. We sell homes. That‘s our business. We want to get people into homes and have them own them. It‘s good for families. It‘s good for individuals. It‘s good for our state. It‘s good for business,” Gamvroulas said, adding, “It can be a condo. It can be a town home.”

Jed Nilson, the owner of Ogden-based Nilson Homes, is the first and so far only builder to participate in the governor’s starter home program. Now, he’s eager to do the same with starter condos.

When the JDC Ranch development near Plain City is complete, 275 of what‘s now 1,000 homes will be single-family detached houses priced for first-time buyers. The 12 starter homes built so far cost between $370,000 to $400,000 and were all snapped up by eager buyers, Nilson said.

“The governor did a press conference there on Thursday, Oct. 31. By the following Wednesday, we had a waiting list of 150-ish people. So there’s huge demand. We have done zero marketing,” he said, noting that list continues to grow.

The $10.7 million he received through the state program was used to buy 130 lots and add roads and utilities for the initial phase of the development started last year as well as to build the 12 starter homes, Nilson said.

The phase also will include another nine single-family detached starter homes as well as 70 townhomes priced under $450,000, he said, citing a requirement that homes in that price range must make up at least 60% of the project to qualify for the state loan program.

For the construction of the market-rate homes in that phase, Nilson said he took out a separate loan at a higher rate.

It took months to put together the initial loan from the state fund, made by First Utah Bank, Nilson said, so he initially had to fund all of the development and construction. “It was a little bit of a nail-biter,” he said, but worth the wait.

How the first starter home project came together

Nilson, who took over a business started by his father in the late 1970s, said Utah‘s lack of affordable housing is “my problem to fix. If anybody can fix the problem, it has to be builders and developers.” So why aren’t more participating in the program?

“Builders have been building large homes on large lots for the last 20 years,” he said. Bigger means more profits, even though Utahns are clamoring to buy smaller brand-new homes on smaller lots.

“I do still make money, I just don’t make as much money as if I were building the market rate homes,” Nilson said. “Here’s the thing that also helps me out, the fact that when I build these starter homes, I get to build more homes.”

He’s not just talking about shrinking the lot size to accommodate smaller, less expensive homes. Local governments have long resisted a push by state lawmakers for them to accommodate smaller lot sizes.

For the 240-acre JDC Ranch development that‘s expected to take seven years to build out, Nilson said with help from the governor’s office, he was able to secure permission from Weber County to build on about 30 acres that normally would have to be set aside as open space.

In exchange, he said the county expects a total of 275 detached starter homes built, so the development has been redesigned to add those alongside the homes originally planned, bringing the total number of units in the project to 1,000.

Lot sizes range from around 4,000 square feet for the two models of starter homes, to between 6,000 and 13,000 square feet for the market rate homes, Nilson said.

His starter homes have a deed restriction requiring the owner to live there, he said, so properties can’t get bought up by investors and turned into rentals. They also come with landscaping and fencing, and ongoing maintenance through a homeowners association.

“We don’t have to worry that we’re going to put in affordable housing and people won’t be able to afford to put their yards in or they won’t be able to afford to maintain their yards,” Nilson said. “Even if my last name weren’t on the business, I want to be proud of what I create.”

Starter homes will sell as fast as they can be built because there’s so little on the market for Utahns who want a new house priced under $450,000, he said, adding that his 12 starter homes all closed on the day they were finished.

“If I had a hundred more, they would all be sold,” Nilson said.

The next phase of the JDC Ranch development with more starter homes is underway and other projects are planned in Utah and Box Elder counties. He said there’s still some money available from his first loan from the state fund and his company is in the process of borrowing more.

Nilson said he’s also ready “to test one on the condo side,” using a loan from the state fund to build a starter condominium project somewhere along the Wasatch Front since “the true way that we start to create affordability is if we go up.”

Opening up the starter home program to condos “is a huge game-changer for the state of Utah, where developers like myself in a master plan like this where it has a thousand units, maybe we could have done some condos and brought it up 1,100 units,” at even lower price points, he said.

“This program is going to help the state significantly,” Nilson said, because including condos may be what makes it possible to meet Cox’s goal of 35,000 new starter homes. “Now I see how we’re going to be able to do it. I think it‘s really brilliant.”

In 2020, Sen. Daniel McCay, R-Riverton, sponsored Utah‘s abortion trigger bill, which would allow abortions only in the case of rape, incest, substantial impairment of the mother’s health, or if the baby had a lethal birth defect or severe brain abnormality, as the Deseret News previously reported.

While the bill made its way through the state Legislature, “there was a lot of pushback from those who advocate for abortion,” McCay told the Deseret News.

However, “for the most part, it passed through the House and the Senate without much delay,” he said.

The bill was signed into law by former Gov. Gary Herbert, and it sat there, unused until June 24, 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

Before Roe was overturned, Utah was one of 18 states that had passed trigger bills limiting abortion access, which were set to go into effect if the federal decision from 1973 was ever overturned.

As of today, 12 states have banned abortion access, 10 states have imposed stricter gestational limits, 19 states have kept their laws at viability, similar to what was in place under Roe, and 9 states have expanded their laws to include some full-term abortions, per the Kaiser Family Foundation.

McCay was surprised to see Roe v. Wade overturned as soon as it was, just two years after Utah passed its trigger law.

“If anybody thought that Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned as quickly as it was after the bill, I would argue they had a sharper crystal ball than I had,” McCay said.

The trigger law went into effect early on Friday, June 24, the day Roe was overturned. The next day, on Saturday, the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah (ACLU), filed a lawsuit against the bill, claiming it violated the Utah Constitution.

On Monday, June 27, 2022, District Court Judge Andrew Stone granted a temporary restraining order to block the law for 14 days.

Next, Stone issued a preliminary injunction, extending the block until Planned Parenthood‘s lawsuit came to a resolution. Then on August 1, the Utah Supreme Court upheld Stone’s injunction 4-1, which allowed Stone’s lower court block to remain while the case moves forward.

That means abortion in Utah is still legal up until 18 weeks of pregnancy.

Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, the sole dissenter, has held that the preliminary injunction blocking the law should be overturned, and Planned Parenthood should be denied third-party standing, per previous Deseret News reporting.

McCay agrees with Justice Durrant: “The Planned Parenthood case should have failed for lack of standing.”

Of the four justices who voted to uphold the injunction, McCay said, “I think the hard part for them is they’re trying to figure out a way to come up with a Solomon solution that is a compromise between what the law says and what they want to be the outcome, and I think that gets increasingly harder for them to do.”

The case’s first procedural hearing is scheduled for April 2026, Pro-life Utah President Mary Taylor told the Deseret News.

Of the abortion trigger bills passed, a vast majority have been contested in courts

The only states with abortion trigger bills that have made it to 2025 relatively injunction-free include laws in Arkansas, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Dakota. All four of these states have total abortion bans.

However, as the dust has mostly settled post-Roe, these states’ abortion laws are outliers in how similar legislation has gone into effect elsewhere across the nation.

More commonly, abortion-related trigger bills faced legal battles, with Planned Parenthood acting as the plaintiff, claiming the legislation violates state constitutions.

In South Carolina, for example, the state passed a 6-week “fetal heartbeat” abortion trigger bill in 2021. The next year, the law went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, but it was quickly met by a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood in July.

The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the trigger law did indeed violate the state’s constitution, and the state’s legislature proceeded to pass a new version of the law. Gov. Henry McMaster signed the bill into law on May 25, 2023, and later that day, Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit, claiming the new law was unconstitutional, per The State.

On May 26, South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Clifton Newman blocked the ban from taking effect and ordered the state’s Supreme Court to look at it again.

In August, the Supreme Court declared the 2023 Act constitutional and allowed it to go into effect, per U.S. Law.

On the other hand, several abortion trigger laws have been overridden by states amending their constitutions after the issue was put on the ballot.

In the cases of Arizona, Ohio and Missouri, their more restrictive abortion laws were overturned by a vote among state citizens, and the right to abortion was added into the states’ constitutions.

Three years after Roe was overturned, abortion laws are undecided in only a few states — and one of them is Utah.

Recent lawsuits against state abortion laws differ fundamentally from Roe v. Wade

Roe v. Wade was a civil lawsuit pressed by Norma McCorvey (under the pseudonym, Jane Roe) against Henry Wade, then-Dallas County District Attorney in Texas.

Author of “The Family Roe” Joshua Prager described how McCorvey became the Roe plaintiff to NPR.

Before 1973 in Texas, abortion was criminalized in the state for over 100 years. McCorvey was “a prostitute at this time,” Prager said, adding that by her third pregnancy, she wanted an abortion. She had given up her previous two children for adoption.

Lawyers Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington filed a lawsuit on McCorvey’s behalf when she was six months pregnant with the Roe baby, per the Brennan Center. They challenged whether Texas’ abortion laws were constitutional.

The case was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in December, 1971, and in 1973, 7 of the 9 justices agreed that the Due Process Clause implies a right to privacy, and the post-Roe federal legal climate governing abortion was born.

The Planned Parenthood lawsuit against Utah’s abortion law, meanwhile, has a non-person plaintiff.

“Planned Parenthood didn’t have a woman that had been injured. Planned Parenthood is claiming a woman could be injured, and that’s highly unusual for the courts to accept that as what they call ‘standing,’” Taylor said.

In Chief Justice Durrant’s dissent, he explained how plaintiffs must show “distinct and palpable injury that gives (them) a personal stake in the outcome of the legal dispute.”

McCay added, “It has to be a person, having that standing or the potential for injury to bring those claims, and we’ve always kind of followed that process.”

“This is a major departure from third party standing over the last 20+ years,” he said.

However, a large majority of the lawsuits resulting in enjoined abortion laws have been pressed by Planned Parenthood, ACLU and other organizations.

Utah’s Supreme Court held in 2024 that providers, including Planned Parenthood, “had third-party standing to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s ban on behalf of their patients,” a decision which Justice Durrant disagreed with.

“Appellate litigation is undoubtedly too expensive, inconvenient and time-consuming. But if these factors alone are enough to justify the exercise of third-party standing, then we risk a dangerous expansion of that doctrine,” he said in his dissent.

Utah lawmakers feel as though their hands are tied

In a conversation with the Deseret News, McCay said he’s heard talk from fellow lawmakers of following suit from other states and passing a 4-week or an 8-week ban, “but we’re just so afraid of the courts enjoining it and restarting it, so it’s really frustrating.”

He explained that while his constituents want more restrictive laws against abortion in the state, lawmakers are “afraid” that new legislation could cause them to restart in the courts.

“It pains me that we are just kind of sitting on our hands, worried that the court will restart litigation and the litigation process just because they’ve gone one way or the other,” McCay said.

Are the widespread injunctions a sign of judicial overreach?

“It is healthy for the legislature, the judiciary and governors to have tension between them,” McCay said. “And I think that tension, while at times I can find it frustrating, I worry about the day when there isn’t tension between those organizations.”

The system is designed to have tension, he explained. “Sometimes it works in my favor, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

However, while every state started its own individual abortion battle on the same day, nearly all have reached legal conclusions, one way or another, and Utah has largely been left behind in its slow trudge toward the case’s procedural hearing.

“A lot of time is ticking away,” McCay said. “To the advocates against abortion, to their point, a lot of children are dying. And the courts, it seems like, aren’t really concerned about that outcome.”

Oregon baseball learned its NCAA tournament fate Monday morning and the Ducks are all smiles.

They will host Utah Valley (32-27) from the WAC at PK Park in the Eugene Regional starting Friday. It’s the fifth straight time the Ducks have been in the NCAA tournament, and their first time hosting a regional since 2021.

Advertisement

Joining the Ducks and Wolverines in the regional will be Cal Poly out of the Big West and former Pac-12 foe Arizona, winners of the Big XII tournament. Cal Poly (41-17) upset UC-Irvine in their conference tournament. As for the Wildcats (39-18), they defeated TCU to earn that league’s automatic berth.

Oregon (42-14) enters the NCAA tourney as one of the hottest teams in the country, as the Ducks have won 11 of their last 12 games. The lone loss came in the Big Ten tournament to the eventual champions, the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

As the 12-seed, Oregon’s Eugene Regional is matched up with the Chapel Hill Regional, where the 5-seed North Carolina team is favored to win.

Oregon and Utah Valley will play Friday night at PK Park after the Cal Poly-Arizona game earlier in the day.

This article originally appeared on Ducks Wire: Ducks host regional as 12 seed and face Utah Valley at PK Park Friday

SPANISH FORK, Utah (AP) — Charu Das was in Los Angeles in 1980 when a for-sale ad for a small radio station in rural Utah County — about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City — caught his eye.

Das and his wife, Vaibhavi Devi, have been longtime members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) also known as the Hare Krishna movement, a Hindu sect that worships Krishna as the supreme being. At $225,000, ownership of the radio station plus the parcel of land around it, seemed like a bargain to Das, whose dream at the time was to broadcast Krishna radio.

The Spanish Fork property in Utah County was not far from the state’s largest freshwater lake, tucked away amid rolling hills with the snow-capped Wasatch mountain range providing a majestic backdrop. Most county residents were — and still are — members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon Church.

“We came here not knowing what Krishna had in store for us,” Das said.

Today, the little radio station is just a dot on their lush 15-acre (6-hectare) campus. At the property’s center sits the Shri Shri Radha Krishna Temple, a 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) house of worship. Its architecture is unique to temples in northern India with ornate facades, domes, a large covered pavilion, overhanging windows and archways.

Llamas and cows graze on the property’s pastures. Peacocks crow as they strut around, suddenly fanning out their iridescent blue and green plumage. A lake provides water to cultivate flowers for worship and organic vegetables and fruits, much of which are used for a donation-based vegetarian buffet open to visitors.

“This place is like Vrindavan in Mormon country,” Das said, evoking the historical city in northern India, where Hindus believe Krishna spent much of his childhood. The city has thousands of temples dedicated to the worship of Krishna and his chief consort Radha — also one of the main deities at the temple in Spanish Fork.

Das and his wife said they hadn’t planned to build a temple. Initially, they added a log house where they held Sunday services and began breeding and selling llamas to support themselves.

In the early 1990s, Vaibhavi Devi floated the idea of adding a temple, and they eventually built two: one on their property and the other in Salt Lake City. They were completed thanks in part to support and seed money from devotees, the local Hindu community and Latter-day Saints.

The radio station took a backseat amid construction and management of two temples, he said.

Devi, an artist, supervised the project, channeling her creativity throughout the process, her husband said. She hired an aerospace professional to design the smaller temple domes, and an Idaho company that fashioned potato storage structures to build the large, main temple dome. She also spent six months on scaffolding decorating the vaulted ceiling inside the main sanctuary, painting dancing demigods, lotus flower motifs and masterfully crafting foam to look like marble.

The temple now conducts school tours as one way to support itself; about 4,000 students from area schools visit the temple each year, Das said.

Monica Ringger Bambrough, a volunteer interfaith liaison for the Latter-day Saints church in the region, helps coordinate days of service for youth groups at the Krishna temple.

“Our kids don’t get to see how others live out their faith,” she said, adding that the only two non-Mormon houses of worship in town are the Krishna temple and the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall across the street.

The Krishna temple’s biggest annual event is the Hindu Festival of Colors marking the start of spring, which draws thousands to Spanish Fork. It features color throws, mantra music, devotional dances and yoga. Das often takes the stage as master of ceremonies and “senior rapper.” He’s been writing rap songs, including one that captures a profound verse in the Gita about devotion and spirituality.

“The Bhagavad Gita is 700 verses divided into 18 chapters, which takes about 45 minutes to read,” he said. “But I have a three-minute rap version for you.”

Connecting with an audience through modern music has inspired him to spend more time in the radio station, which originally brought him to Utah. He’s experimenting with AI-generated music, including a country-western jingle advertising their vegetarian buffet.

“This is it,” Das said. “This is how we’re connecting with people. This is what Krishna brought us here for.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.