NMC To Relocate University Partners To Main Campus, Consider New Ideas For University Center Building

It’s the end of an era for the Northwestern Michigan College University Center. In an email sent to students and faculty this week, NMC President Nick Nissley announced that NMC’s university partners will “begin relocating to the Front Street campus” later this spring, “with classes beginning there this fall.” The move opens up new potential for the existing University Center building, which NMC plans to rename the “Boardman Lake Campus” and repurpose “in ways that reflect both student needs and community stewardship.”

Opened 30 years ago this year, the University Center is the brick-and-mortar centerpiece to NMC’s partnerships with major Michigan universities. Back then, community colleges in Michigan still weren’t authorized to offer any kind of bachelor’s degree, which meant students looking for anything above an associate’s degree typically had to leave the area to do so. The University Center presented a way for students to earn more advanced degrees from major Michigan universities without needing to travel or relocate.

When it opened in 1995, the University Center had “more than 40 programs offered by a dozen Michigan colleges and universities,” according to NMC’s website. Since then, University Center partners have awarded some 10,000 degrees via the center, including not just four-year bachelor’s degrees, but also master’s degrees, doctoral degrees, and specialty certificates.

Currently, NMC has five University Center partners: Ferris State University, Grand Valley State University, Michigan State University, Central Michigan University, and Davenport University. Come this fall, those five partners will offer their Traverse City services out of the Beckett Building on NMC’s main campus.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Laura Oblinger, chair of the NMC Board of Trustees, says of the University Center relocation, which was identified as a top priority in last year's NMC Thrive campus master plan. “For years, we've been hearing from our students about wanting more vibrancy on our main campus. And we've also been hearing for a while from our University Center partners that they want to be on main campus and have that interaction with students that are currently enrolled at NMC.”

An NMC alumna herself, Oblinger finished her associate’s degree at the college before earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees through the University Center. Reflecting on her own time at school, Oblinger is hopeful that relocating and spotlighting NMC’s university partners on the main campus will allow for more visibility of those offerings to NMC’s student body.

“When I was getting my associate’s at NMC, I knew that a bachelor’s degree was important in part because NMC was just building the University Center. And so, the concept of continuing education beyond an associate’s degree – and doing it right here in our backyard – was really front and center at the time,” Oblinger says. “Having the University Center on main campus, I think that’s really going to help our students have a better understanding of the opportunities that are available to them right here in Traverse City. And then that brings more value to our university partners, too, because they have more direct access to this new pool of potential students.”

As for the University Center building itself, Nissley says the plan is to adopt the Boardman Lake Campus name at a meeting of NMC’s building and site committee, scheduled for May 23. Then comes a soul-searching process, where college leaders will need to decide how to use the property going forward.

“I think we have identified that there are really three things that can be done with the property,” Nissley tells The Ticker. “One is, do we lease it? We’ve got a lessee in there now, with Greenspire High School, and we could look at doing more of that, and hopefully meet community needs and develop a revenue stream in the process. The second option is to outright sell the property, if we decide we don’t want to manage it as a landlord. And thirdly, we could do some kind of development on the property.”

Nissley says the board is just starting to have conversations “around the longer-term possibilities” for the University Center building, with no “set time frame” on making a final decision. One topic he expects will be part of the discussion? The potential of converting the property into housing, similar to what is happening with the former TCAPS administration building on Boardman Avenue.

“We haven’t had formal discussions, but we know, informally, that the housing idea has been raised by people in the community, and even by our board members,” Nissley says. “The property is so disjointed from our Front Street campus that it probably doesn’t make sense to have student housing out there. But perhaps it could serve workforce housing needs for the region.”

“There is some skepticism about whether that building could be converted to housing in a cost-effective way,” Nissley adds. “It was a corporate office building before it was the University Center, and corporate office buildings usually aren’t the best buildings to try to convert into housing. But we’ll see. I’m certain that, as we go through this process, the issue of housing is going to be one that we discuss.”

Whatever comes next, Oblinger assures the community that there will be opportunities for public engagement.

“At some point, we will have a public hearing in front of our community on different proposals for that building,” Oblinger says. “That piece of property is still of great value to us, and we certainly see an opportunity to continue to use it as something that supports our community. It is a beautiful asset, and the Boardman Lake Loop Trail is such a great part of the landscape now, so we really feel like that building can be repurposed into something even better.”