With a $27 million windfall headed Northwestern Michigan College’s way thanks to the pending sale of the Boardman Lake Campus, the college’s board of trustees is already making decisions about how to spend some of the proceeds. At their monthly meeting Monday, trustees voted to invest $2 million in the construction of the Freshwater Research and Innovation Center (FRIC), and another $5 million in a long-gestating geothermal power project on NMC’s main campus. Both investments are contingent upon the sale closing.

In January, the NMC board formally authorized the sale of the Boardman Lake Campus (formerly known as the NMC University Center) to the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians for $27 million.

“Since that time, the earnest money has been received and the environmental survey and due diligence process is underway,” NMC President Nick Nissley wrote in his February report to the board. “At this stage, a closing is anticipated for late March or early April.”

Trustees voted Monday to allocate the first of that money toward a pair of major projects. The $2 million investment in FRIC will close a funding gap in that project’s budget. NMC is a partner in FRIC alongside Discovery Pier, Traverse Connect, 20Fathoms, and Michigan Technological University.

At Monday’s meeting, trustees heard from Greg Luyt, who chairs the FRIC's board of directors, as well as Discovery Pier CEO Matt McDonough (also FRIC board treasurer) and NMC Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Jason Slade (FRIC board secretary).

According to the trio, FRIC – which broke ground in September – is still on track for a spring 2027 opening. Confirmed tenants include Discovery Pier, NMC’s own Great Lakes Water Studies Institute, the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, local startup Wave Lumina, and global engineering consulting firm NV5. The board is also pursuing other tenants, including major Michigan universities like Michigan Tech and Grand Valley State University, federal agencies like the United States Geological Survey and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and “early startups” in the blue tech space.

The biggest stumbling block so far has been funding. The first phase of the project carries an estimated cost of over $29 million, and in their presentation to the NMC board on Monday, Luyt, McDonough, and Slade noted the center still had nearly $1.9 million left to raise. 

“The contractor has given a March deadline to identify space that will need to be ‘shelled out’ if a funding gap is not closed,” Nissley wrote in his board report.

While the NMC board had previously authorized a $3 million investment in 2024, trustees voted Monday to kick in an additional $2 million to close the fundraising gap. Asked if FRIC would need another cash infusion a year or two from now, McDonough said he was confident the center will be largely self-sufficient.

“We’re not going to let off the gas on the fundraising,” he said, noting that FRIC will need additional dollars “for initial operations, programming to help startups commercialize their new technologies, incentives for the BlueTech Challenge winners, and…to hire a chief innovation officer or CEO for that entity, to really drive future tenant attraction for the site.” He added that financial projections do “show a deficit in year one, because we won’t be fully occupied by then,” but assured trustees the center would “be in the black” by year two.

An additional $5 million from the Boardman Lake Campus sale will go toward building a geothermal exchange system on NMC’s main campus. NMC’s Timothy J. Nelson Innovation Center has been powered by geothermal energy since it opened, but the college wants to power five other campus buildings with geothermal, too. The system would replace NMC’s existing boiler power plant, which has been operating for more than 50 years and is nearing the end of its usable life. NMC leaders have previously indicated that, thanks to energy savings, the geothermal project could pay for itself within 25-30 years. However, the system carries a sizable upfront investment, estimated around $20 million.

Beyond a $2.7 million Department of Energy grant earmarked for the project, NMC had been planning to issue bonds to pay for the system. The proceeds from the Boardman Lake Campus sale provide an alternate option that NMC leaders estimate will “reduce total interest costs for the college by more than $4.5 million over the 30-year duration, and reduce annual debt service payments and impact to the general fund.”

The board ultimately voted unanimously to allocate the combined $7 million to FRIC and the geothermal project.