Douglas College students will be calling Anvil Centre home in 2018.

Douglas College has announced it’s adding a second campus in downtown New Westminster at the Anvil Centre Office Tower. The college will lease 66,000 square feet (6,132) of space in the building at 11 Eighth St. to support anticipated growth in enrolment during the next three to five years.

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"Douglas College is growing and growing. This expansion comes just in time," Douglas College president Kathy Denton said in a press release. "It's an exciting chance to develop new learning opportunities for our students through our degree, post-degree and diploma programs. It also gives us space we need to upgrade our existing campus in New Westminster and plan for the future."

Douglas College Anvil Centre will open mid-summer 2018 and will welcome students for the fall semester next September. Covering four floors, the campus will include 21 new classrooms, a host of new student-collaboration spaces and a simulation lab for “financial and Amazon-style supply chain management modelling” that will expose students to the pressures and realities of these fields.

According to Douglas College, the new space will also include flexible collaboration rooms that transition to the needs of individual instructors, quiet study and group project areas for students, as well as faculty and administration offices.

"The Anvil Campus Centre will be a wonderful new space that will draw students from every corner of the province to Douglas College," Advanced Education, Skills and Training Minister Melanie Mark said in a press release. "This expansion helps Douglas College continue to provide the education and training students need to open the doors of opportunity."

Douglas College business student Supun Thalagala thinks it’s a good move for the college.

"Expanding to the Anvil Centre will give students more space to study, prepare for class, and connect after class," she said in a press release. "And, the best thing is, it's so close to the New Westminster main campus and to the SkyTrain.”

The City of New Westminster completed construction of the Anvil Centre civic facility and office tower in the fall of 2014.