UNK breaks ground on Regional Engagement Center

KEARNEY – This isn’t your average office building.

The University of Nebraska at Kearney’s Regional Engagement Center will transform campus and the community, bringing new opportunities to rural Nebraska and connecting people across the state.

“It’s going to be the key gathering place for the university and for companies, businesses and visionaries in central and western Nebraska. Everything that we think is important will be able to happen here in the Regional Engagement Center,” UNK Chancellor Doug Kristensen said Thursday morning during a groundbreaking ceremony for the $15.6 million project.

More than 125 people, including city, state and university officials, attended the event at UNK’s University Village development, where the 52,000-square-foot facility will be built directly west of the Village Flats residence hall. It’s expected to open in early 2024.

Standing in the middle of the former farmland, Kristensen called the Regional Engagement Center a “linchpin” for the 104-acre development that’s started to take shape over the past four years.

“We really are putting an urban village in a rural community, which is so unique,” he said. “That doesn’t happen anywhere else in Nebraska, but it’s happening here in Kearney.”

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