LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — If you live in the northwest valley, then no doubt you've seen signs advertising the College of Southern Nevada's "future Northwest Campus" on a couple of empty lots near Durango and Elkhorn, a project that's been talked about for more than 20 years.
Tom Cleve and his family have lived in the Northwest for a decade, and noticed the signs as soon as they moved in — his son Dylan actually goes to CSN right now.
WATCH | CSN, City of Las Vegas work towards making progress on Northwest Campus
"We've been waiting for that campus to break ground and open for quite some time," Tom Celeve said.
"We live not too far away — a few minutes — from where that campus would be built, so that would've been super convenient if it was built by [the time I started going there]," Dylan added.
"This last semester, he had to go all the way to the Green Valley campus in Henderson because he was taking EMT classes," Tom said. "So, you can imagine what that commute was like."
The problem is, though, we still don't know when construction is going to start.
CSN released renderings of the Northwest Campus in April, saying the goal is to eventually support 10,000 students when it's all said and done.
"I don't understand how there could be such a delay in the breaking ground, in establishing a learning institution up in the Northwest here, where we currently don't have any community college opportunities," Tom Cleve said. "Obviously they have campuses in the center of Las Vegas, in Henderson, but we've been lacking that since the time we moved here, which would've been nice."
On Wednesday, the Las Vegas City Council and CSN officials got one step closer to a deadline to see shovels in the ground, sorting out some of the construction deadlines that came with granting CSN the land several years ago.
According to city council documents, CSN now needs to have the first building complete or show substantial progress towards development of the Northwest Campus by September 28, 2032, with a formal report to the city council before March 15, 2030.
At Wednesday's city council meeting, Ward 4 Councilwoman Frances Allen-Palenske told a CSN representative that she'd like to have an update to the council well before then.
"Sometime in the fall, maybe November or December, and fully explain — in the presentation portion of the council meeting — to the people of the northwest exactly what's planned," Allen-Palenske said Wednesday.
I spoke with CSN Vice President Clarissa Cota on the phone on Thursday, and she says that's something CSN is more than game for.
Cota calls the Northwest Campus a "shovel-ready project" at this point, but they're working on acquiring all the necessary funding before construction can get underway, which is well over $100 million, citing the considerable amount of infrastructure work that will be necessary to transform the vacant lots into a college campus.
Still though, Northwest locals, and CSN students like Dylan Cleve, say they'd just like to see some kind of progress on the project.
"Sure I won't be able to benefit from it, but there will be plenty of other students, people that are younger or around my age right now, that would benefit from a campus here in the Northwest," Dylan said.
Obviously this is something that we'll be following very closely, but if there's something else going on here in the Northwest Valley that you think I should know about, send me an email: Guy@KTNV.com.