Northwest College is on to its second temporary dining facility, which is planned to be where students eat meals up until the new student center opens next school year.

Prior to its Aug. 14 meeting, most of the NWC trustees were present to take a tour of the new facility next to the college soccer fields, a week after the facility first started serving early arriving students. The roughly 150 already on campus last week includes resident assistants in training, soccer players, volleyball players and international students.

Final touches, including an array of pictures showing campus events and students, were only put in the day before. It was just in time, with kickoff weekend Saturday-Tuesday (today), by which time around 321 students are expected to move on to campus.

The building will then be turned into a facility for the soccer teams, complete with locker rooms, bathrooms, coach offices and more.

Until then, it'll be able to serve a max of 100 students per 30-minute meal period. Because that's a smaller capacity than in the gym at the Johnson Fitness Center, the previous temporary dining facility, President Lisa Watson said they've upped meal times from three to five during the busy lunch period. Students in each block will have 30 minutes each to eat. There will also be four dinner times, three of which will be 45 minutes each, and the fourth 30 minutes. All of the equipment used at the Trapper Gym is now in the new facility.

“We are doing everything we can to make it very functional,” Watson said.

Another way of lessening the burden on the building is to offer pizza from the Yellowstone Building. The campus' local Sodexo General Manager, Kimberly Palmer, said they will offer four pizzas daily, including pepperoni, cheese and two specialties pizzas each day. And unlike the food served at the temporary facility, which is prepared at the Park County Fairgrounds and then shipped across town, the pizzas will be made in a flex lab at the Yellowstone Building.