CAMBRIDGE — The largest of the former Erwin Hymer Group North America manufacturing plants has a new owner.

Conestoga College has purchased the 250,000-square-foot building and 16.5 hectares (41 acres) of land on Reuter Drive in Cambridge for $33.5 million, with plans to consolidate its various trades schools into one state-of-the-art facility.

"It'll give us a chance to have one of the most comprehensive and high-quality trades facilities in the province," Conestoga College president John Tibbits said in an interview Wednesday. "This is a game-changer."

Conestoga has wanted to bring all of its trades schools together under one roof for quite some time, Tibbits said, but the cost of purchasing the same amount of land and constructing a similar building from scratch was prohibitive — between $120 million and $140 million, he said.

The college paid the entire balance of the purchase up front, the president said.

"It was a tremendous deal," said Tibbits. The large property also gives the college room to expand in the future.

Planning for the new campus is underway, with the facility expected to open by September 2021. Students from the trades and apprenticeship programs in Waterloo, Kitchener, Cambridge and Guelph will all be brought under one roof, Tibbits said.

This will help avoid some duplication within the program. The building will become a showcase facility to help promote the college's trades program and attract new students.

The province expects about one in five new jobs in Ontario over the next five years to be in trades-related occupations. In 2016, nearly one in three journeypersons were 55 years or older and getting close to retirement, according to the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development.

The new building will also provide Conestoga with opportunities to expand programming options at other campuses. There are no plans to close or sell existing space that will be vacated by the trades.

The former BlackBerry repair centre was built in 2001 and has undergone extensive renovations in the years since. The building was most recently the corporate headquarters of RV manufacturer Erwin Hymer Group North America, which went into receivership in February. Erwin Hymer did not own the building.

The Class A building includes more than 200,000 square feet of industrial space and about 45,000 square feet of office space. It was one of three properties and nearly 400,000 square feet of space that became available after the former RV maker shut its doors, resulting in the loss of about 850 jobs.

This is just the latest in a series of expansion projects for the college, established in 1967 at the Doon campus in south Kitchener.

In 2011, Conestoga opened a facility on Fountain Street in Cambridge. In May it announced plans to expand into downtown Kitchener at Market Square. Expected to open in January, the new Kitchener location will occupy 82,000 square feet of space with a focus on business programming for about 1,000 students.

Last fall, Conestoga celebrated the transformation of its Waterloo campus, a $58-million upgrade of the former University Heights Secondary School which is named in honour of Tibbits, who has been president and CEO of the college since 1987.

Conestoga also has campuses in Stratford, Ingersoll and Brantford. It expected to join Wilfrid Laurier University at a new site in Milton, but those plans were put on hold last year when a $90-million funding pledge was withdrawn by the Progressive Conservative government.

Full-time enrolment was more than 16,500 students last year, with students from more than 80 countries. Conestoga has more than 1,200 full-time faculty and staff.

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jjackson@therecord.com

Twitter: @JamesDEJ