A year after bond vote, Iowa Western’s new technical building on track for fall 2027
A year after voters approved Iowa Western Community College’s $55 million bond issue, the college’s new Transportation & Logistics Building is rising on the Council Bluffs campus, and President Dan Kinney says it should be substantially complete by October 2027. Crews began moving dirt the day after the November 2025 vote. Kinney said a rainy September put the project a few weeks behind, but he does not expect it to miss its target. “To really build the workforce that we need in this region, we had to have more space,” he said.
The 86,000-square-foot building will house the college’s diesel and automotive technology programs. Kinney said both now operate in spaces built in the 1970s for 30 to 40 students. About 90 students are now enrolled in one program and 80 in the other, and the college has had to turn away would-be diesel technicians in recent years. Diesel technology will move from about 11,000 square feet to about 21,000. Construction trades will then move into the old diesel space, growing from about 3,000 square feet to 11,000, and welding and HVAC will also expand. Kinney said he heard about the shortage firsthand while campaigning for the bond, when a farmer told him he had come only because his combine was down at harvest and would be for four days, with too few technicians to fix it.
Kinney is still raising an additional $15 million for the project and said that effort is going well. Part of the money will pay for what he calls flexible industrial training spaces in Clarinda, Shenandoah and Atlantic. Equipment can be moved between sites as local needs change, so a town might host a welding program one year and HVAC the next. Iowa Western already runs regional centers with area high schools, including one in Missouri Valley that combines students from four schools into welding and construction programs. “This bond is for keeping our youth in Southwest Iowa,” Kinney said.
The college is also growing while many others shrink. Kinney said enrollment is up 5.8 percent this fall after a 6 percent increase last year, even as colleges nationwide brace for fewer high school graduates. Campus housing is about 90 percent full, the highest he has seen since arriving at Iowa Western. Kinney credits closer ties with area high schools, where more students now take Iowa Western classes and then enroll after graduation. He said the college was named one of the top 200 community colleges in the country last year by the Aspen Institute.
Iowa Western is also expanding short-term training for adults who want to get certified and go to work. Kinney calls it community and business education. The college has applied for federal Workforce Pell funding for its first short-term program, with six or seven more under consideration, and the fundraising campaign will create scholarships for students in those programs. Advisory boards of local employers help shape what each program teaches. “I want to stay on the cutting edge, but yet not the bleeding edge,” he said.
Kinney said more young people are choosing to stay in Southwest Iowa rather than leave for larger cities, and some students who come from Nebraska end up staying in Council Bluffs after graduation. “Once the students come here, it’s like, oh, wow, Council Bluffs. I like this,” he said.
