COEUR d'ALENE - A consultant's recommendation that North Idaho College trustees consider building a new professional-technical education facility alongside a proposed multi-million dollar event center is garnering mixed reactions from individual board members.

NIC board chair Ken Howard told The Press Friday that the consultant was not directed to include the construction of a new technical education facility in the plan for a possible event center.

"They just put that in there as a potential use for some of the property. That was all their idea," Howard said. "I thought that was one of the more interesting aspects of their presentation, that they were thinking of tying in some of the academic programs to the event center."

The consultant, John Frew of the Denver-based Frew Development Group, was hired last month after an ad-hoc committee recommended that the college give further consideration to the development of an event center. The committee determined that more information was needed.

Frew and representatives from VenuWorks, an Iowa event center facility management company, were tasked with reviewing a 2008 feasibility study that determined Coeur d'Alene could support a sports complex and event center, and then determining today's best options for the location, size, number of seats, concessions and parking for a new facility.

Frew recommended if the college moves forward with construction of an event center, it should be developed on the Atlas Mill site - 25 acres of waterfront property west of Riverstone, along the Spokane River.

Trustee Ron Nilson said he thinks the report was well done, and that it was new information the board needed to hear.

But some of the recommendations trouble him.

"I was very upset that this included a career and technical education building, and he'd already made the assumption that urban renewal money would be used for it," Nilson said.

NIC has a $10 million pledge for the event center from Lake City Development Corp., the city of Coeur d'Alene's urban renewal agency, but the college has to raise $5 million of its own before LCDC will put in its share.

The NIC board has been looking into expanding its professional-technical program facilities for the past several years, and earlier this year, the college held several public forums to gather feedback on potential locations being considered. Discussions have focused on six possible spots - four sites on the college's campus and two off-campus sites: the Jacklin Seed facility near the Riverbend office park in Post Falls, and 40 acres the college owns adjacent to the Kootenai Technical Education Campus high school on the Rathdrum prairie. Nilson said he's not sure turning the Atlas Mill site into public property and thereby taking it off the county's property tax rolls is the best use of the land.

"We had three or four versions of a 6,000-seat arena for $15 million. Now it has gone down to 3,000 seats for $24 million," Nilson said.

He said they heard projections that the 6,000-seat arena could lose about $100,000 per year, and the new study estimates a loss of almost $500,000 over two years, with fewer seats.

The new 3,000-seat plan also calls for twice the parking, he said.

"The numbers don't add up. It's a huge difference between what we heard six months ago," Nilson said. "It's completely different information than the public has received about the project."

Trustee Christie Wood called the new event center proposal "really interesting," but said it's just an idea.

"It's just one more thing that we can consider," Wood said.

She said she would like the board to continue exploring the possibility of co-locating the professional-technical education facility near the event center on the mill site.

"I think it should get just as much of a look as everything else, and if there's a possibility we can bundle something, have the chance to do two things at once, I'll take a look at that," Wood said.

Wood acknowledged there is a critical need for the college to expand its PTE programs.

"We know our employers have needs for people to put into positions, that they can put people to work," Wood said.

Board chair Howard said they've made expansion of the professional-technical programs their No. 1 priority, but said that if they were able to obtain an athletic center that is built debt-free and remains debt-neutral, he thinks the trustees would be foolish not to consider it.

"One's an opportunity, and one's an absolute priority," Howard said.

The trustees are expected to continue exploring all options for a location to expand their professional-technical programs.