COEUR d'ALENE - What a difference a season makes - and decades of planning.

Long-range vision helps too, but what a dramatic transformation it has been from summer to fall.

Civic leaders converged at the Education Corridor Tuesday, just as they did in June, but this time around everything was tangible.

All the design documents, blueprints and years of strategy have come to life.

"It barely looked like space, really," said Mayor Sandi Bloem, reflecting on the June groundbreaking ceremony where the same leaders stood next to piles of dirt, surrounded by huge dirt-moving rigs.

"Parking lots is what we called them," she said of the torn-up soil of a meeting spot. "But not really."

But that barely recognizable space at Hubbard Avenue, near Academic Way has become place - and the footprint of where higher education should blossom in Coeur d'Alene is solidly entrenched.

A mile of new roads, three roundabouts, new sidewalks, Centennial Trail connections, street lights and 450 trees now grace the corridor. And while Tuesday's dedication was part celebration of the partnerships that paved the way, it was part reminder that more can be done to ensure educational opportunities are a staple in North Idaho's future.

It's a team of people "who decided they weren't going to listen to the naysayers," said Mic Armon, North Idaho College board chair. "It's not any one person, it's a collaborative effort."

The project, decades on the radar, was made possible by partners - like the city, taxpayers, North Idaho College, its foundation and Lake City Development Corp., the city's urban renewal board - teaming to make it happen.

The goal is a state-of-the-art campus in the heart of the city where an abandoned mill once stood.

But without the infrastructure, which now wraps around the city's ever-improving wastewater treatment plant, it would be difficult for buildings, institutions and the rest of higher learning's foundation to fall into place.

"Once it was gone, it needed a purpose," said Denny Davis, LCDC chair, on the old mill.

The agency was the lead on the project, its first time filling a project's leadership shoes.

Without the partnerships, Davis said, "we wouldn't be standing here today."

LCDC is looking to take up phase 1B of the project next spring. That would punch out River Avenue and connect it to Northwest Boulevard for around $1 million.

Public art is being selected for the roundabouts and wastewater treatment plant in the meantime.

The project has already been a named Idaho's 2011 Grow Smart Award winner, an example of a "showcase project for Coeur d'Alene" and "showcase project for Idaho," said Dale Baune, of JUB Engineers Inc., which worked on the project.

While a ton has been done - since summer even - the goal is to always to look ahead.

"The next generation wants to thank you," Judy Meyer, holding her grandson, Jameson, said to Bloem after the ceremony. "That's what it's all about."