Even before the temple was announced in December 2003, city leaders saw the potential for growth sprout when LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley stunned the community in 2000 by outlining a plan to make church-owned Ricks College a four-year university now known as BYU-Idaho.

As a new member of the City Council back then, Benfield had known only six months of "normal" council meetings as things plugged along "like they had for the past 20 to 30 years." After the June 2000 announcement, "We never went back.

"City Council meetings went from 90 minutes to six or seven hours a night. We had a line of public hearings stacked up each meeting," for everything from proposals for new housing development to new motels and restaurants.

The temple announcement added fuel to the development fire, and while things have slowed a little, she said, "it's still continuing."

Early on in that boom, council members took a bus trip to Utah County, talking with business and government leaders in the Orem-Provo area about what they would have done differently with the benefit of hindsight, Benfield said.

"That really helped set up our thinking with regard to planning, developing, zoning and how we want to see our city laid out. ... We don't want to turn it into what developers can make it. We wanted to lay out the guidelines and the developers can work within those parameters. We're not going to let it happen the other way."

Census figures show the town had about 17,500 residents in the year 2000, but the most recent population figures come in at about 28,000, said Clair Boyle, director of economic development in Madison County.

Daryl Olsen, principal in a local title company, works with Benfield as president of the area Chamber of Commerce. The sub-prime mortgage crisis that has a stranglehold on some parts of the country hasn't had a significant impact on the Rexburg area, he said.

"Our economy here is still quite robust. Foreclosures have not increased dramatically here. Things are still pretty good, and the various lenders and builders are quite optimistic." Property prices saw a "pretty sharp spike" in 2000, and those values haven't declined much, if at all, he said. Average home prices hover around $200,000.

In addition, city leaders are fielding an influx of inquiries from large commercial developers they haven't seen before. Marriott just purchased property on the newly opened University Boulevard for a new hotel/motel-type property — the sixth to be built here within the past eight years.

A new high school is also planned in the same area.

"I would dare say in the next two to three months we'll have big-box retailers making announcements about coming here," Olsen said.