"Whoa! Did you feel that?"

"It seemed like the ground was trembling. I could have sworn it was an earthquake."

I called the USGS Earthquake Information Center, and they advised me that what I experienced last week was not an actual earthquake, but rather an "epicenter relocation shock."

What happened was that South Dakota's "research epicenter" had suddenly shifted 50 miles to the south, migrating from Brookings and SDSU to Sioux Falls and its spanking-new state university, Sioux U.

Scientists tell me it's not unlike the pole shift the earth might now be experiencing. In our case, you can understand what happened by visualizing the State of South Dakota as a sheet cake sitting atop a lazy Susan. The research epicenter had just been carefully marked with a juicy red cherry at Brookings when somebody came along and gave the lazy Susan a spin. Darned if that cherry didn't jar loose and roll right down to Sioux Falls, where it stuck in all the gooey frosting that's being spread around down there.

In this case, it was those old spinmeisters, the South Dakota Regents, who twirled the cake. They got Brookings all warmed up to be SoDak's research capital and then went and gave away epicenter rights to their new pet project in Sioux Falls.

It's kind of like the Homestake Mine deal. Everybody's all excited about the research potential and the participation by all our universities, but mark my words: somehow they'll figure out a way to give the mine to Sioux Falls, and Brookings and the rest of the state will just get the shaft.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about: For years now, the City of Brookings, the Brookings Area Chamber and SDSU have been working together to create the Innovation Campus – a research park at the state university. It would act as a magnet to draw in businesses, which presumably would locate here to tap into the R&D talent at SDSU. Prosperity, no doubt, would follow.

Working under the banner of the Growth Partnership, Inc., community leaders invested thousands of hours of sweat-equity and the city and the Chamber and donors kicked in hundreds of thousands of dollars to make the park a reality.

This was all done with the blessing of the Regents; heck, even Mike Rounds showed up to toss dirt at the groundbreaking.

And so it was that Vision Brookings 2010, a consortium of all the local groups, proclaimed that it was going to position "Brookings and SDSU to take their rightful places as the epicenter for knowledge-based jobs in Eastern South Dakota and as a world-class university."

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read the Argus Leader headline last Thursday: "Epicenter of research in S.D. taking shape." In Sioux Falls!

"Good Lord," I shouted, "they've hijacked the epicenter!"

And if the Argus says Sioux Falls is the center of universe and all things good and holy, by golly, we'd better believe it. After all, Sioux Falls IS the Emerald City, and we bumpkins stuck out in rural Munchkinland probably just don't have the brains to understand that, or the hearts to care.

University Center, wrote Argus journalist Peter Harriman, "entered the world of university research" with the groundbreaking for the Center for Graduate Education and Applied Research (GEAR). Well and good. We've all known about that one from the get-go, when the Regents first dumped their grandiose plans for the metro campus on an unsuspecting public.

But Harriman's article – as well as a news release approved by the normally secretive Regents themselves – went much further. "The Board of Regents … " Harriman wrote, "hopes before long the University Center casts a much longer shadow on that (research) world."

To that end, the Regents have begun a solicitation for proposals for what they're calling the "University Center Science and Technology Park."

"Higher education officials invite potential developers to share their visions for making the rest of the property (the SDPURC campus) a research enclave, serving university and private researchers," Harriman reported.

Ever sensitive that the people of Brookings who invested time and money in a similar research park might feel just a tad hoodwinked – their epicenter has been jerked out from under them, after all – the Regents have asked developers to let them know how their plans to locate at Sioux U would mesh with the ongoing medical research in the Best Little City in America, and "whether it would complement or compete" with the research at SDSU and the other state schools. Uh huh.

The Regents, by the way, are spending millions in Sioux Falls, footing the entire cost of the GEAR Center (the classroom and research buildings were part of a $15 million request to the Legislature), and they're donating the 85 acres of land for the Sioux U research park.

In Brookings, the Regents offered the Innovation Campus planners here not millions for new buildings, nor free land. We got a 99-year land lease. (It's Munchkinland! They won't know the difference!)

The Regents were never straight with the people of South Dakota about creating a seventh state university – overcoming the politics of big city vs. small town would have been a nuisance – and so they slipped that one by, calling their creation "not-a-university." (Wink, wink.)

Nevertheless, I'm all in favor of the University Center as a source for continuing education and undergraduate and advanced-degree programs. The Sioux Falls market needs educational services just like the rest of the state, and residents there should get them. It's just the way it has come to us that has left such a bad taste in our mouths. And such a lingering smell.

But two university research and technology parks, 50 miles apart? Maybe in Illinois or Virginia, where the population and the business climate could support it. But here?

I could be all wrong. Maybe our research-parkers in Brookings are deliriously happy with the thought that Sioux U will be trying to steal their thunder. Maybe it won't affect our work here one bit – that it will complement what we're doing. That's a possibility.

And so, someone may yet come along and convince me that the Regents funding another university research park in Sioux Falls – even though nearby Brookings has poured its heart and treasure into a project yet to enter the bricks-and-mortar stage – is a good thing.

I wouldn't bet on it.



Ken Curley is editor of The Brookings Register; the opinions expressed in this column are his own and not those of the newspaper.