“I know we’ve lost a lot of people’s trust”

The Factory promised luxury student housing, a video on their site boasting a double-decker hot tub, sand volleyball, six-story parking, the fastest Wi-Fi and more.

The Factory also promised Kassidi Nudd, a junior in sociology and criminal justice, it would be ready for move in on Aug. 27.

“I called Thursday and asked if it would be ready and they promised me it would be,” Nudd said. “There is no way it won’t be done.”

The next day, Aug. 7, The Factory management sent out an email to nearly 300 students, including Nudd, which said it was unable to fulfill that promise.

“Based on the current reports from the general contractor, we regretfully must inform you that we do not anticipate The Factory to be ready by the projected August 27th opening date,” the letter said. “We do anticipate being able to open sometime in the following weeks, but do not have an accurate date that we can give you right now.”

Patrick Nelson, the principal at Nelson Brothers Construction, the construction company in charge of The Factory, said the first indication the complex wouldn’t be ready in time came in May when the vendor supplying the cabinets and countertops stopped responding to The Factory. The company, Bridgewater Limited, was one of the many vendors or subcontractors that left the project on no notice.

“Multiple subs just walked out and left us hanging,” Nelson said.

The main problem, he said, was getting the manpower for such a large project in a small area in Logan.

“There aren’t any major companies in Logan,” Nelson said. “We had to get the manpower from Salt Lake and that’s where we’re hurting.”

According to Nelson, with the construction boom in Salt Lake, it is hard to convince any contractors to work in Logan when they can stay in their hometown.

“Would you rather work in Salt Lake or drive 90 miles to Logan for half the pay?” he said.

Despite these roadblocks, Nelson trusted the opinion of his construction manager, Lynn Powell, who originated the move-in date of Aug. 27.

At the beginning of August, the Nelson brothers decided to reevaluate, which resulted in the termination of Powell and the hiring of Ben Ashton as the new construction manager.

“We feel much more confident now about what is being communicated to us from construction companies,” Nelson said.

The Factory has not made any accommodations for students. Nelson said they have checked with hotels, but there are not rooms available for a long enough period of time. Their next step is to reach out to the city and LDS stake president for assistance.

Nelson said the problem is that housing in Logan is tight this year. In other years if this had happened, two weeks would have been enough time to find housing. The only people who knew how tight housing was going to be was the university.

“The university knew they were adding two or 3000 students,” Nelson said. “If they would have let the students know, ‘Hey, you’ve got to find your housing now,’ we would have obviously been much more sensitive. We could have been much more aggressive in two things: one, letting our residents know that, ‘Hey, if we’re not done you better have a backup’ … or two, we could have been much more aggressive in finding a backup for them.”

After calling around town to find housing, Nudd finally found an option that placed her 10 minutes farther from campus in an unfurnished apartment and with a move-in date that leaves her homeless until mid-September.

“We called and told The Factory and they said they aren’t responsible for us,” Nudd said.

Some students have opened up their houses and apartments to The Factory’s future residents and ex-residents, including Christian Andersen, who lives on the corner near The Factory and has watched the construction process.

“We took in an extra bed in our apartment,” Andersen said. “We don’t really have a lot of space for it. It’s kind of a three-person place.”

Andersen’s new roommate has asked for a return on his deposit and is using Andersen’s apartment as permanent housing, but anyone else that has not asked for a return should be able to move in around Oct. 15, according to Nelson.

Nelson said what people don’t realize is that no one is more disappointed that the company missed the projected date than them, as they are missing out on rent from students that could be used to pay back loans for construction.

This is the second year The Factory has missed a projected opening date.

In 2013, the person in charge of securing the bank loan for construction passed away, which caused the bank to pull the loan and the project ran out of money. However, they were able to find alternate housing for every student that asked them.

This year was different.

“I know we’ve lost a lot of people’s trust, but all we can do is work really hard to get everything done and earn people’s trust back.”

Andersen doesn’t believe it will be easy.

“You’re going have to do something to get the trust of our campus back,” he said. “That building has not been completed twice, and if they don’t make reparations I just don’t think that we should trust them.”

— @alreid000

reid.al73@gmail.com