WATERLOO - Hawkeye Community College will sublease a portion of a building on which construction is just getting started.

The Board of Trustees on Tuesday approved the agreement on Hawkeye's Western Outreach Center with Grundy Center Community Schools. The action comes a month after trustees signed an agreement with Cardinal Construction to build the 6,100-square-foot office and classroom space and lease it to the college. The park is south of U.S. Highway 20 along Iowa Highway 14.

Ground will be broken at 10 a.m. Thursday. The public is invited.

The five-year agreement will require Grundy Center schools to pay 50 percent of Hawkeye's lease obligation, up to $40,000 annually, for the three fiscal years between July 1, 2011, and June 30, 2014. Hawkeye's five-year lease, which starts in August, depends somewhat on construction costs, estimated by Cardinal at $908,000.

Hawkeye will pay $250,000 upfront for interior work after the exterior is built. The college also will prepay two years of the $6,453 monthly rent. That will lower later lease payments on the building.

Lease payments will be adjusted further depending on if building costs are higher or lower than the estimate. In addition, the college will pay real estate taxes with the monthly rent.

The center is being built so that students from area high schools have a central location for Project Lead the Way engineering classes, which are done in partnership with the college. A variety of college courses also will be offered at the center.

In other business, the board approved:

Issuing $7.14 million in industrial new job training certificates to provide training for 529 workers at seven companies in Waterloo and Cedar Falls. Bankers' Bank of Madison, Wis., is purchasing the certificates. They will be paid back over 10 years through the regular income tax with holdings of the new employees.

New job training agreements were approved Tuesday for three of the companies. Those agreements will be used to add 191 jobs at John Deere in Waterloo, 22 jobs at Edgecore in Cedar Falls and 45 jobs at Ruan Transport Corp. in Cedar Falls. Other agreements approved earlier will add five jobs at Cedar Valley Community Healthcare and 50 jobs at the CBE Group, both in Waterloo, and 35 new positions at DISTek Integration and 181 at Target Corp., both in Cedar Falls.

Extending the life of a tax-increment financing district in Readlyn for three more years. The TIF district, where the additional taxes generated have been used to build the Park View housing project, was scheduled to sunset in June. However, it will take until June 2012 to repay bonds issued to finance the project using the tax money. Readlyn is allowed to extend the district's length of time if affected taxing bodies agree.

Contact Andrew Wind

at (319) 291-1507

or andrew.wind@wcfcourier.com.