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residents. Many Arden Hills residents include our 3900 Bethel Drive campus a part of their <br />regular running or walking route. Others enjoy use of our tennis courts and our Sports and <br />Recreation Center. More recently, we acquired the 2 Pine Tree Drive property, with its <br />approximately 50 university-campus-like acres that include walking trails. City residents – from <br />before Bethel’s acquisition of the property and continuing now – routinely walk those trails for <br />recreation. We hope this will continue for years to come. In addition, we are contributing <br />$800,000 over eight years to help the city build a trail that will run along Old Snelling to connect <br />the city’s trails that are north and west of our 3900 campus property with County Road E. <br />Bethel has been a good neighbor to the Arden Hills Community for over 50 years. We have <br />every intention of continuing to be very good neighbors for decades to come. We would <br />welcome some mention or acknowledgement of this longstanding positive relationship in the <br />report. <br /> <br /> We also believe a few economic specifics should be added to the report to more accurately <br />reflect the monetary impact of higher education: <br />o Attached you will find a report titled “Local Economic Activities of Minnesota’s Private <br />Colleges.” This report can be found on the Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) <br />website (www.mnprivatecolleges.org). Here are a few highlights from that report, with <br />corresponding Bethel University figures for FY16: <br /> “Collective spending on capital construction expenditures … were $76 million.” <br />– in FY16, Bethel invested $9.2 million in capital construction. <br /> “Minnesota’s Private Colleges were the 13th largest employer in the state, with a <br />combined 14,021 employees.” – in FY16, Bethel employed 1,155 workers. <br /> “In fiscal year 2016, total institutional expenditures increased 3.5% to more <br />[than] $1.54 billion [from FY14].” – Bethel’s expenditures in FY16 totaled <br />$109M. <br /> We encourage you to review the entire report for a more complete <br />presentation of the economic benefit we believe Bethel, and all Minnesota <br />private colleges and universities, add to the state and to the municipalities <br />within which we reside. <br />o The current report cites a research study of “The Impact of Student and Visitor <br />Spending” by Brown University. The item highlighted from that study shows that <br />students living on campus spend approximately $3,300 per year off-campus. However, <br />that same research report includes some additional items worth noting: <br /> Students that live off campus spend approximately $11,400 per year off- <br />campus. Bethel has hundreds of full-time, traditional undergraduate students <br />living off campus each year. In the fall of 2016, we had approximately 900 <br />students living off-campus. Using the Brown study formula, that means Bethel’s <br />off campus undergraduates contribute over $10 million to the local economy. <br /> At the end of the study, Brown University estimates that “local spending by out- <br />of-town visitors totaled approximately $15.2 million in fiscal year 2011. This <br />spending directly supported 218 FTE jobs in Rhode Island; and an additional 64