When Jeff Green walks into work at the Northland Career Center, he spends his day helping high school students and adults learn different career paths, such as culinary arts, welding or construction.

But the center has outgrown its space since it opened in 1980. The facility can’t meet the needs of industry changes or include new programs based on demand. The Kansas City Council approved $25 million in funding for a new space last week. The money will come largely from taxes on data centers built in the area, along with private donations and a state match.

Crews could start construction on the $74 million new, larger career center by the end of the summer. Green said there’s a high possibility people who learned building trades at the career center could help build the new facility.

“We want our space to be a place people go to train on whatever's next for them,” Green said. “Our current building, to be fair, was great when it was built. It wasn't designed for the things we're trying to do in it now. In this space, we've designed specifically to be flexible over a long period of time.”

The new center will sit near 152 Highway and Platte Purchase Road. That will reduce bus times for a student in North Kansas City to just 10 minutes, instead of the 40 minutes it took to get to the old center in Platte City. It will also double its capacity to nearly 1,000 high school students. Adults will also have the option to take night and weekend classes in the new space.

Wade Kiefer is a business representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 124. His union, along with many others in the area, supported the campaign for the new center. He said the construction-focused programs will help area unions recruit new members.

“We have an aging workforce, and we have more projects coming in the area,” Kiefer said. “We’re a construction union, so we're constantly working ourselves out of a job. We are always looking for high school kids who are essentially pre-apprenticeship ready.”

Kiefer said IBEW Local 124 gets about 1,000 applications each year for its apprenticeship program, but the union only takes in 140. The career center helps students become more competitive candidates.

Kansas City’s Northland is one of the fastest growing parts of the city, and there are multiple big development projects like data centers that are attracting high schoolers and adults who take night classes to pursue a career in construction. There are also options for first responder training, hospitality and teaching.

Once the new building is done, it will nearly double the career center’s list of programs, from 12 to 23. Green said the new building will finally allow the career center to add more in-demand career fields, like cosmetology and digital design.

“When we ask high schools, ‘What program do you want, based on your kids' feedback?’ hands down, since I've been around, it's been cosmetology,” Green said. “It's a very expensive and very difficult program to start, but we're doing it. We're finally going to have the space to be able to do it.”

Two-thirds of the students at the new career center will be from Kansas City, Missouri. That includes students in the North Kansas City, Park Hill, Liberty and Platte County school districts as well as Kansas City Public Schools.

But the center is not just for students in the Northland. Kansas City’s funding for the school includes a requirement that the center partner with school districts throughout the city and include equitable access. That could include developing satellite facilities in other areas to address transportation issues.

Council member Nathan Willett championed the finance plan for the center. He said the center will help get students into the workforce faster and also help them in their traditional schooling. Willett, a math teacher, said his students who go to the center become more focused and driven once they’ve found a pathway they like.

“You have a lot of different students from different backgrounds, different school districts who get to come together and learn,” Willett said. “I think that's important, to learn from each other and learn while doing various skills and trainings and just being able to have something that you know they'll be productive at the next thing they do.”

Students at the center don’t have to stay in the same program they started. Green said they often shuffle to a different career path after experimenting with programs, seeing what interests them. Green is excited to see a lot more of that once the new center is completed.

“My favorite part of the job is really helping our students figure out what is next,” he said. “Are they going to come out of NCC and be able to go right to work? Are they going to be able to be ready for that college? That's our job … to figure out those employee-listed enrollment pathways and help our kids get there.”