For the past few years, Northwestern has been talking about and dreaming of a new athletic training complex on the lakefront. It's finally becoming a reality.

School officials announced on Friday that they would break ground on the facility on Nov. 13, with construction to begin immediately afterward. The price tag is projected at $225 million.

The project includes an indoor practice field for the Northwestern football team, a new headquarters for coaches, meeting rooms and locker rooms and an academic center.

Northwestern's facilities have lagged behind other teams in the Big Ten, and the program hasn't undergone a significant overhaul of its practice and administrative complexes since 1997. Plans for this development were first announced in 2012.

“This is a landmark day for our entire campus community,” Wildcats athletic director Jim Phillips said in a school news release. "This transformational facility will seamlessly integrate athletics into the heart of campus, offer new recreational opportunities for Northwestern students, faculty and staff and enhance the use of the lakefront by the entire Evanston community. We are tremendously excited to begin construction and realize this vision.”

With its location on the shore of Lake Michigan, Northwestern will have the most picturesque football facility in the Big Ten, if not the nation. It should provide a huge boon to the program's recruitment efforts. Head coach Pat Fitzgerald has called the project a "game-changer" for Wildcats football.