Collaboration Campus

09/29/2026

Appreciate the North Platte Telegraph taking the time to dig into the possible Collaboration Campus project.

There is obviously a lot packed into this idea, and one newspaper article can only cover so much. More importantly, this is still a project we are testing and refining, not something that has already been decided.

I know people have fair questions. Is the child care need really there? Why include the library? Why this location? What will the project cost? How much, if anything, would local taxpayers be asked to contribute?

Those are exactly the questions we should be asking right now.
I have been working through the background to all of this in my “How We Got Here” posts, and I’ll continue over the next several posts with the library, location, cost, and some additional work we are doing to make sure our child care assumptions are right.

In the meantime, feel free to ask questions here. I may not have every answer yet, but if I have it, I’ll give it to you. And if we still need to do the homework, I’ll say that too.

Thanks to the Telegraph for helping move the conversation forward.

09/07/2026

How We Got Here – Part 5: Why a Children's Museum?

At the end of my last post, I said I would explain why the North Platte Area Children's Museum became part of the Collaboration Campus conversation and why I believe it's about much more than creating another place for children to play.

I'll start with something important: North Platte already has a children's museum, and the people involved with it have done an incredible amount with what they have.

The challenge is the building.

The museum operates out of North Platte's old Carnegie library, a building more than a century old that was never designed to be a children's museum. It's a multi-level building with aging systems, limited space, and virtually no dedicated parking. Families routinely park in the adjacent jail parking lot, and museum leadership has shared stories of parents being approached for rides while walking their children from their cars to the museum.

None of that is a criticism of the museum. Quite the opposite.

To me, it demonstrates how much the organization has accomplished despite a facility that increasingly works against what it is trying to do.

But there is a bigger question here than whether the museum needs a better building.

What can the right children's museum mean to a community?

I think it is easy to hear "children's museum" and picture a place parents take their kids on a rainy Saturday afternoon. There is certainly value in having another place for families to spend time together, but a quality children's museum can be much more than that.

At its core, a children's museum is another form of education. Children learn through play, exploration, creativity and hands-on experiences. The right exhibits can introduce science, technology, engineering, art, literacy and countless other concepts without a child ever realizing he or she is being "taught."

That fits naturally with what I wrote about early childhood education. If we believe learning begins long before kindergarten, it doesn't suddenly stop when a child leaves a classroom.

But the opportunity extends beyond education.

A great children's museum can become a destination.

Families will travel for experiences worth traveling for. School groups will come. Families from surrounding communities will make a day of it. And for a community sitting directly along Interstate 80, there is also an opportunity to give families already traveling through North Platte a reason to stop, spend a few hours, eat a meal, buy gas, and perhaps discover more of the community while they're here.

That distinction matters because a children's museum ultimately has to sustain itself too.

A museum confined by its building can only do so much. Limited exhibit space limits the experience. A multi-level layout makes it more difficult for caregivers to supervise multiple children. Poor parking creates a barrier before a family even walks through the door. And if the experience doesn't continually give families a reason to return, attendance and memberships eventually reflect that.

On the other hand, the right facility creates possibilities.

Our current planning contemplates approximately 12,000 square feet for the Children's Museum, designed specifically for this purpose. That includes permanent exhibit areas, space capable of accommodating traveling exhibits, larger rooms for birthday parties and camps, and the support space necessary to operate a modern museum.

But once again, this is where collaboration becomes important.

A children's museum sitting by itself has to create its own destination.

A children's museum located alongside a high-quality early learning center, a modern library, shared community spaces, outdoor areas, and other family-focused programming becomes part of something larger.

A parent dropping one child off at child care may bring another to the museum. A family visiting the museum may walk into the library. Library programming can connect with museum exhibits. Preschool students can benefit from resources that would never make financial sense to duplicate inside their own classrooms.

Each organization remains independent, but proximity creates opportunities none of them would have on their own.

That's really what caught my attention about the Children's Museum.

The issue isn't whether North Platte should have one. It already does.

The question is whether we are at a point where the current facility has taken the museum about as far as it can reasonably go, and whether the right facility could transform it from a local amenity into a true regional destination.

I believe we're at that turning point.

The people who have kept the museum operating for years have already built the foundation. The opportunity now is to give that organization a facility capable of matching its potential.

Next time, I'll get into the library. Like the Children's Museum, the need for a different library facility existed long before anyone ever used the words "Collaboration Campus." The interesting part is how collaboration may give North Platte an opportunity to address a need that otherwise could remain financially out of reach.

08/11/2026

We are very excited to unveil our new website. The new site does a great job outlining all the amazing aspects of this project and it's benefits to North Platte. Please check it out.

This is the homepLearn about the Collaboration Campus in North Platte, Nebraska—a shared community initiative bringing together education, childcare, family services, literacy, and food assistance to strengthen families for generations to come.age of the website

08/05/2026

How We Got Here – Part 4: Why Child Care?

In my previous posts, I have hit hard on child care. This is because in my view, the current lack of access to quality, affordable early learning opportunities is the biggest hindrance to economic development in our state.

While the traditional approach to economic development has been attracting businesses and creating jobs, it has become abundantly clear, across communities of all sizes in our state, that if communities do not meet their child care needs, they will not attract and retain the employees necessary to fill those jobs.

That doesn't mean affordable housing, strong schools, or quality health care aren't equally important. They are. The difference is that those areas have historically received significant public investment. Child care, on the other hand, has largely been left to the private market, apart from limited assistance for qualifying families.
This creates an impossible dilemma for child care providers.

To provide consistency and quality, providers need to compensate employees with more than just minimum wage, but in order to do so, they need to raise rates to families, often to a point that becomes unaffordable, and enrollment suffers.

Just ask any family paying for child care today what has happened to tuition over the past several years. At the same time, Nebraska's minimum wage has increased from $9.00 per hour in 2022 to $15.00 today, an increase of roughly 67%. Whether someone agrees or disagrees with that policy really isn't my point. These same challenges existed before those changes took effect. My point is simply that providers have had to absorb tremendous cost increases while trying to keep child care affordable for families. That financial equation has become increasingly difficult to make work.

The result is a system that too often depends on people who stay in the profession because they love children, even though they could earn more money doing something else.

Talk to someone who has operated a child care center for twenty or thirty years, and I suspect you'll hear the same story over and over again. They stayed because they believed in the work, not because it was the most profitable business they could have chosen.

Communities cannot build their future on that model. We can't expect people to lose money simply because they have a passion for serving children.

My approach seeks to address the sustainability issue while keeping quality at the forefront of the conversation. And no, this isn’t a call for the city, state or federal government to fix it. This isn’t a debate about whether the government should be more involved in child care. I, like you, live in the real world, and my focus has and will be here how we take the current funding framework and apply it to a model that makes sense.

That's where collaboration comes in.

If three organizations each own and maintain separate buildings, each has its own utilities, insurance, maintenance, parking, mechanical systems, and other facility costs.

Now think about those same organizations operating under one roof.

Some space can be shared instead of duplicated. More importantly, the cost of operating one 60,000-square-foot building isn't necessarily three times the cost of operating a 20,000-square-foot building. Scale creates efficiencies that simply aren't available when every organization operates independently.

So what do we do with those savings?

We put them back into the program that is desperate for every dollar it earns, and we use them to lift up quality. Better compensation for teachers. Research-based curriculum. Professional development. Higher-quality early childhood education.

That philosophy has guided everything we've done at the Impact Center.

From the beginning, the goal wasn't simply to provide child care. It was to provide intentional, research-based early childhood education that prepares children for success before they ever walk into a kindergarten classroom.

Through collaboration, we have been able to invest in the same curriculum that Rule 11 public preschools utilize. The results have been encouraging. Students from the Impact Center made up roughly two-thirds of Gothenburg's 2025-2026 incoming kindergarten class. Of those children, 74% entered kindergarten at benchmark in English Language Arts, with another 15% approaching benchmark. In mathematics, nearly 85% entered at benchmark, with another 12% approaching benchmark.

Those numbers aren't meant to suggest we've found a magic formula, nor are they intended to diminish the outstanding work being done by other child care providers or by parents themselves. Every child, every family, and every program is different.

What they do suggest is that when a community intentionally invests in high-quality early childhood education and builds a model through collaboration capable of sustaining that quality, children benefit.

And we’ve done all of that through two years of balanced budgets.

I believe this model can be replicated in North Platte and in other communities across Nebraska. That's why I believe the Collaboration Campus represents far more than a construction project. It's an opportunity to rethink how communities invest in the next generation.

Next time, I will get into why the North Platte Area Children's Museum became part of that conversation, and why I believe it's about much more than creating another place for children to play.

07/29/2026

How We Got Here – Part 3

First, I’ll give an update on our new baby below, but I want to get right to it since I’ve been radio silent for a few weeks!

After our initial meeting in May 2025, conversations continued with the leadership of several organizations. Those discussions ultimately shaped what we now call the Collaboration Campus.
Going into those meetings, the goal wasn't to convince anyone to join a project because, quite frankly, there wasn't one yet.

There were no architectural drawings, no selected site, no financing plan, and no list of future tenants. The purpose of those meetings was simply to better understand the long-term needs of organizations serving the community and to explore whether there were opportunities to strengthen those missions through collaboration.

As those conversations continued, something became clear: the community wasn't facing one big challenge. It was facing several different challenges that all pointed toward the same opportunity.

The first was childcare.

North Platte needs additional childcare capacity. Communities for Kids-Lincoln County data shows the county has 288 children under the age of 6 with all available parents working who do not have access to a licensed childcare provider. What became apparent, however, was that simply building another childcare center doesn't solve the long-term problem. Even a center operating at full capacity can struggle financially. High-quality childcare requires excellent teachers, appropriate staffing ratios, modern facilities, and a commitment to keeping tuition within reach for working families. Those are difficult realities for any standalone childcare provider to balance. The discussion quickly shifted from “How many classrooms do we need?” to “How do we create a model that remains financially sustainable for decades?”

The library entered the conversation for many of the same reasons.

North Platte's library has faithfully served the community for decades, but it operates from a building constructed in the 1960s that requires significant ongoing maintenance. At the same time, libraries have evolved far beyond what they were when that building was designed. They have become technology centers, community gathering spaces, educational resources, and hubs for lifelong learning.

The possibility of a new or modernized library wasn't a new idea. It had been discussed in various settings for many years, and the Library Foundation had even begun raising funds toward that long-term goal. At the same time, everyone recognized the fiscal reality facing the City. There are countless important needs competing for limited public resources, and a new library understandably didn’t seem to be high on the list of priorities.

Rather than viewing that as the end of the conversation, it became an opportunity to ask a different question: Rather than asking whether the City could somehow find the money to build a new library, the discussion became whether a collaborative project could leverage private philanthropy, shared infrastructure, and operational efficiencies to help make something possible that otherwise might remain out of reach.

The Children's Museum entered the conversation for similar reasons.

The museum has done an incredible job serving families from its historic Carnegie library building, but that building was never designed to function as a modern children's museum. Space is limited, parking is virtually nonexistent, and families are often left parking in the adjacent jail parking lot, where they are occasionally approached by individuals asking for rides.

More importantly, the conversation wasn't simply about replacing a building. Great children's museums become destinations. A well-designed facility has the potential to attract local families, school groups, and travelers passing through the community. A facility constrained by its size and layout makes that increasingly difficult. As those discussions continued, it became clear that North Platte's Children's Museum had reached an important crossroads. The question wasn't whether the museum was valuable. It was how to position it to continue growing and serving families for decades to come.

The Food Bank entered the conversation differently.

Unlike the other organizations, this wasn't part of the original discussions. It began after representatives from the Walmart Distribution Center reached out to describe a challenge they see every day. Smaller food donations can often be coordinated with local pantries, but larger donations with a short shelf life frequently have nowhere to go because western Nebraska lacks sufficient warehouse and cold storage capacity.

As a result, truckloads of donated food are often shipped to Omaha for sorting and repackaging before some of that same food is distributed back to western Nebraska. The conversation quickly became whether there was a more efficient way to strengthen food distribution across the region while reducing unnecessary transportation, handling, and waste.

Although each conversation focused on a different mission, they all pointed toward the same underlying challenge.

How do we continue serving our community twenty or thirty years from now while being good stewards of the resources entrusted to us?

The organizations weren't identified because someone decided they should all share a building. They became part of the conversation because each presented a challenge that collaboration appeared uniquely positioned to help address. Different missions. Different needs. But perhaps a common opportunity.

Over the next several posts, I'd like to take a closer look at each of these organizations, why they became part of the conversation, and what role they could play in strengthening our community for decades to come.

But lastly, as promised, I am excited to share we welcomed Rocky Paul Venteicher to our family on July 17. Both baby and mom are doing great, and the other four kids are providing plenty, if not too much, help. Please bear with me while I work to keep on top of everything!

07/16/2026

We’re excited to share another important step forward for the Collaboration Campus - North Platte.

While much of our work isn’t yet visible, our team has been hard at work evaluating potential sites, refining the concept, meeting with community partners, and working alongside architects and other professionals to determine what this project could become and whether it can be done the right way.

Planning a project of this scale requires significant time, expertise, and resources long before a shovel ever goes into the ground. Early planning commitments allow us to continue that work, answer difficult questions, and make informed decisions before asking the community to move forward.

We’re grateful to announce that Dayspring Bank has pledged $250,000 toward Phase 1 planning efforts. This commitment will help fund the professional planning, design, and due diligence necessary to continue evaluating and developing the project.

We appreciate Dayspring Bank’s confidence in the vision and their willingness to invest in the planning process. As our work continues, we’ll keep sharing updates and providing the community with a transparent look at where we are, what we’re learning, and what comes next.

Statement from Dayspring Bank:
“Dayspring Bank is proud to pledge $250,000 in support of the Collaboration Campus-North Platte. Projects like this demonstrate what can happen when a community comes together around a shared vision. We are honored to invest in a collaborative effort that will strengthen families, expand opportunities, and help ensure future generations across Central and Western Nebraska have the resources they need to succeed.”

07/09/2026

Post 2: It Didn’t Start With a Campus

Grateful for the engagement and interest in my last post.

As promised, I’d like to answer a question I’ve received several times: Where did the Collaboration Campus idea come from?

It started with childcare.

In the summer of 2024, shortly after the Gothenburg Impact Center opened, I began receiving calls from people in North Platte asking if I could help address the childcare shortage here.

At the time, I was hesitant. We were still getting the Impact Center fully operational, and after spending about six years planning, fundraising, and building that project, I needed a break.

Over the next several months, though, I continued learning more about North Platte. I met people, heard more about the community’s childcare shortage, and watched the Impact Center begin operating. By early 2025, I decided it was worth taking a serious look.

As I started digging into the issue, I kept coming back to something.

You can build a beautiful facility, but if you can’t keep the lights on ten years later, you really haven’t solved the problem.

The reality is that high-quality childcare is incredibly difficult to make financially sustainable over the long term. We want teachers to earn good wages. We want children in safe, modern classrooms. We want care to remain affordable for families. Those are all reasonable expectations, but they also work against each other on a profit and loss statement.

When we developed the Impact Center, one of our core ideas was that childcare shouldn’t have to carry the entire burden of owning and operating a facility by itself. I didn’t think it was realistic, or responsible, to expect taxpayers to shoulder that burden indefinitely, and while philanthropy can accomplish incredible things, I also didn’t believe annual fundraising was a sustainable long-term operating model.

Instead, we asked a different question. Could collaboration create enough operational efficiencies to make childcare more sustainable over the long term?

By sharing infrastructure, common spaces, maintenance, utilities, parking, and other operating costs with compatible organizations, we believed we could create a stronger operating model than a standalone childcare center could support on its own.

As I looked at North Platte, I wasn’t interested in recreating the Impact Center. Every community is different, and every community has different needs.

What interested me was whether the same philosophy could apply here.

If collaboration could create a more sustainable childcare model, could it also strengthen other community organizations? Could it create operating efficiencies that benefited everyone involved? Could it open the door to philanthropic support that might not otherwise exist because the community impact extended well beyond a single organization? And could it create a place where families naturally interacted with multiple organizations simply because they were already there?

So, in May of 2025, we invited representatives from local government, education, healthcare, economic development, nonprofit organizations, employers, and philanthropy to sit around the same table.

The purpose wasn’t to design a campus or decide what should be built. It was simply to ask whether there were community needs that might be stronger if we started thinking collaboratively instead of independently.

Several ideas came out of that meeting. Some ultimately fit this collaborative approach better than others. Afterward, I reached out to the leadership of those organizations, which included the North Platte Area Children's Museum, North Platte Public Library, Communities for Kids-Lincoln County, and Food Bank for the Heartland, to better understand who they were, how they operated, what challenges they faced, and what they hoped to accomplish over the next twenty or thirty years.

As those conversations continued, the idea slowly began taking shape.

Everything else grew from there.

Next time: I’ve used the word “collaboration” a lot, but what does that actually mean? I’ll walk through the operational philosophy behind the Collaboration Campus and why I believe it’s the most important part of the entire idea.

07/07/2026

How We Got Here - Part 1

Over the next several weeks, I'd like to share the story behind the Collaboration Campus.

These posts are coming from me personally, even though they'll be shared here on the Collaboration Campus page. My goal isn't to convince anyone that this project is perfect or that every idea has already been figured out. Quite the opposite, actually.

My hope is simply to explain how this idea came about, where it stands today, what has and hasn't been decided, and why I believe it's a conversation worth having. Along the way, I hope you'll ask questions, challenge assumptions, and maybe even point out something we've missed. That's how good community projects get better.

To start, I think it's only fair that you know a little about me.

My name is Colten Venteicher. I'm an attorney with an office in North Platte, although my family and I live in Gothenburg. My wife and I are also just days away from welcoming our fifth child, so if these posts suddenly stop for a few days or I'm a little slow to respond, bear with me.

I grew up in a working-class family, the son of a police officer and phlebotomist. When I was 14 years old, I started working construction to help pay my tuition at a private high school. Those years taught me lessons that stuck. Show up. Work hard. Treat people fairly. If you're going to do something, do it right. And whenever possible, leave things a little better than you found them.

My parents also taught me something that's shaped much of my life: we're called to be good stewards of our communities. To them, community wasn't just a place you lived. It was something you helped build.

That's why I'm involved with the Collaboration Campus.

I have no interest in public office, and I don't care about recognition. Honestly, this is probably the most public-facing post I have ever made on this site. The reason is simple: I've realized that if people don't hear directly from those involved, they'll naturally fill in the blanks themselves. I'd much rather answer questions openly than let assumptions do the talking.

I'm involved because I genuinely enjoy helping communities solve difficult problems, and I believe one of the greatest compliments my children could someday give me is that I spent my time trying to make our communities stronger.

I also understand there are questions about the Collaboration Campus. There should be. Some ideas will resonate with people, others won't. Some questions already have answers, while others are still being worked through. That's exactly how it should be. Communities should ask hard questions before taking on big projects.

So over the coming weeks, I'd simply like to tell the story. How did this idea begin? Why are these organizations talking about working together? How would something like this operate? How could it be funded? What decisions have been made, and what decisions haven't?

One lesson I've learned from previous community projects is that it's not enough to simply develop a good idea behind closed doors and unveil it when it's ready. Even with the best intentions, people can feel like decisions were made without them or that their voices didn't matter.

Whether that's a fair perception or not, it's a real one, and it's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.

That's one of the biggest reasons I'm writing these posts. I don't want this project to be something people hear about after the fact. I want people to understand how ideas develop, what questions we are asking, what decisions still lie ahead, and where the community can genuinely help shape the outcome.

If this project ultimately moves forward, I want it to be because the community understands it and supports it, not because people felt like decisions had already been made for them.

One thing I've learned over the years is that the best ideas usually don't come from one person. They come from community members willing to have honest conversations with one another.

I hope you'll be part of that conversation.

Next time: Every project has an origin story. I'll share how this idea began.

07/06/2026

Congratulations North Platte on another successful NebraskaLand Days!! The Collaboration Campus continues to move forward and we're seeing great progress. Thank you to all the community leaders who have stepped forward to lead this project. We will be announcing our local Steering Committee very soon.

As things progress, and become more clear, we've made some updates to our About Us page at www.collaborationcampus.org/about. Check it out. If you have questions please reach out. We'd be happy to meet with anyone in the community. Thanks North Platte!!

Building for the Future The Collaboration Campus represents an investment in the future of North Platte and the surrounding region. By creating a shared home for organizations dedicated to education, childcare, family support, and community engagement, the campus will strengthen families, improve ac...

05/27/2026

North Platte is home to many amazing childcare facilities. However, analysis indicates that in North Platte, approximately 1,099 children under age six have all available parents in the workforce, yet the community contains only 811 licensed child care spots, representing a critical shortage of 288 spaces. Statewide, child care deficits generate an estimated $1.2 billion in annual direct economic losses due to worker absenteeism, turnover, and
productivity drops.

Over the past five years, North Platte and Lincoln County have experienced an unprecedented period of economic expansion, positioning the region as one of the most rapidly developing areas in Nebraska. According to the North Platte Area Chamber and Development Corporation, approximately $2.3 billion in new projects have been completed, are underway, or are in advanced planning stages. This growth is outstanding and the need for additional childcare will continue to grow.

The early learning challenge is the clearest and most measurable of the Collaboration Campus components. Operating models show that high-quality care is structurally expensive, with personnel costs absorbing the majority of revenue. The Campus model alleviates this operational strain by sharing building overhead and integrating specialized facilities like industrial food service and outdoor play zones.

Building the Early Learning Center, as part of the Collaboration Campus, is a huge boost to North Platte and Lincoln County.