In June, Rockne Freitas, HCC chancellor, will ask the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents for permission to ask private developers to bid on the new HCC campus as well as a new University Center in Kona.

Both would double the number of students now being served.

"If it works out well there's a possibility of breaking ground (for both) sometime early summer next year," said Freitas, whose modest campus is now squeezed next to the University of Hawai'i-Hilo and shares some of its facilities. "We would like to see both projects go simultaneously. There's urgency on the west side and on the east side, too."

Regents were pleased at the speed with which the new campuses are moving ahead.

"There's a sense of urgency to get this off the ground now," said regent Andres Albano Jr., noting he doesn't want the board to lose this "window of opportunity."

The expansion will give the community college students an important sense of who they are, said a UH-Hilo employee who has been around the students from both campuses for the past three years.

"I think it will give them a sense of identity," said Candy Card, a food service worker at the campus center cafeteria at UH-Hilo, who sees students from both campuses pass through their doors. "Right now they're sitting in an old campus. It's not very visible. It's not new. And now HCC wants to branch out. Definitely the objective is for student enrollment and who wouldn't want to go to a new campus? And for Hilo, they'll get more space."

The new HCC site is a 122-acre parcel on the corner of Komohana and Puainako streets about a mile and a half toward the volcano from the current campus.

The Kona site is 500 acres above the airport on state land next to the Hiluhilu development. The university hopes to share some infrastructure, primarily roads, with Hiluhilu. The university may also occupy some space on the Hiluhilu site until its own campus is ready.

Currently the University Center for West Hawai'i in Kona is located in small, leased space in a Kealakekua shopping center.

The Kona University Center, with five buildings planned, would bring in two-, four- and six-year programs from other campuses through distance learning and the Internet.

While there's no firm cost estimate at this point, Freitas said the figure being mentioned unofficially is $100 million for both projects when they're completed. But the hope is a private developer would bear the brunt — if not all — of that cost in a public/private partnership.

"We don't have any timelines yet," Freitas said. "We don't want to set expectations and have to retract."

Already the university is launched on three other public/private partnerships: to build the first new dorms in more than a quarter-century at the Manoa campus, a new Cancer Research Center in Kaka'ako next to the new Medical School and a new West O'ahu campus in Kapolei.

Freitas said the new Komohana campus for HCC would likely be built in phases, with the expectation of increasing the number of students served at the two-year community college from about 2,500 to 5,000.

"We're very optimistic that it's going to just continue to grow," he said.