The College of Western Idaho continues to plan campus expansions for the future.
CWI is ready to turn an empty parking lot in downtown Boise into a full urban campus.
Officials unveiled plans for an Ada County campus Tuesday morning, the next chapter in the continued growth of the college.
As a part of the CWI's vision 2040, the college hopes to change the complexion of the school over the next 20 years, and they have their sights set on Boise.
When everything is all said and done, the goal is to have a 600,000 square-foot campus with a focus on creating a single location downtown that’s accessible to Ada County.
“Right now we have students traveling large miles to get from Nampa to Ada County out to Caldwell and then back," said CWI President Bert Glandon.
Glandon says as the Treasure Valley grows it’s important to create affordable higher education.
"With the growth pattern that it looks like this downtown campus could easily serve 20, 25,000 students," said Glandon.
Those students will need jobs, but Boise Mayor Dave Bieter believes the valley will be ready to support them.
"With BSU and what's going to be located right here, around 30,000 college students right in the core, we also have 25,000 jobs right here," said Bieter.
And those jobs will require a range of skills.
"This campus will be business, industry and technology geared toward a lot of the advancing technologies downtown," said Glandon.
An ambitious multi-year and multi-million dollar project that the CWI is already working on funding.
"Bonding is also one, we are also working with business and industry and corporations to partner with us on some of the buildings to get them up and running in a timely fashion," said Glandon.
The vision for the future campus is to be a large part of the downtown community.
"This will be an urban campus with four or five high-rise buildings on it," said Glandon. "We are all so enthusiastic about the community support and community involvement."
CWI currently has several spaces in Boise where they hold class, but their hopes is to open a part of the main Boise campus by the fall of 2020.
