Gonzaga University plans $50 million in new construction, reports the Spokane Journal of Business. Part of that money will pay for building a new 300-car parking garage to ease the crunch around the McCarthey Center when the Zags are playing.

The school also plans to quadruple the size of its student center, and down the road, officials plan to create faculty offices and classrooms in the recently purchased Fuller building at 111 E. Desmet, the JoB reports.

GU needs to expand because its enrollment continues to grow, the paper said. It's up 2.7 percent this year, to more than 6,900.

And here's an interesting point. By my math, total full and part-time enrollment at Spokane-area colleges and universities is up nearly 3 percent this year, and some schools are at near-record levels. (Hello, EWU.) That's counterintuitive. Typically, when job markets are this good, college enrollment falls, because potential students are too busy making money.

I know we've got a demographic bulge with the baby boom echo (that is, children of boomers who are now college age), which would account for the undergraduate enrollment surge. But graduate programs and Spokane's community colleges - which you'd expect to be more sensitive to employment patterns - are also reporting gains.

If you've got an insight into this, I'd love to hear it.

GU STUDENTS WILL HAVE COMPANY ON CAMPUS SOON. Tiny Spokane Tribal College is launching a Spokane branch campus that will be housed at Gonzaga. The school was founded 12 years ago at Wellpinit, on the Spokane reservation. It offers degrees in libral arts, computer science and Native American studies.

ANOTHER COLLEGE YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF is Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, which is set to open next year in Yakima. It's the first new medical school in the state in more than 60 years, according to the Yakima Herald-Republic. The college says its mission is training primary care doctors to serve in rural areas.

The college just hired its first president, Pierce County physician Dr. Stan Flemming, a former state representative and an Army Reserve brigadier general. Flemming says his mission will be to raise money, complete construction of the new facilities and recruit faculty.

DOWN IN PULLMAN - which also is home, by the way, to a fine men's basketball team - WSU officials are looking for developers to build an on-campus hotel and conference center on land near the new Fairway Road golf course. The university wants to host more academic conferences, and thinks such a move would help fill up existing hotels in the community, as well as the proposed new one.

OFF-CAMPUS, a long-running battle over a proposed Pullman Wal-Mart is going to get a state appeals court hearing "soon," reports The Daily Evergreen, WSU's campus paper.

Local activists - who have a decades-long history of opposing chain retail - have been fighting the Wal-Mart proposal for three years, mostly because of its potential impact on downtown retailers, but also because they don't like the proposed location on already crowded Bishop Boulevard. However, others point out that cash-strapped students - who are the majority of Pullman residents, if not voters - would benefit by having the discount retailer in town.

A decision on permits could finally come next year, a city official told The 'Green.

AND IN SIMILAR COLLEGE TOWN NEWS, the Ellensburg City Council has approved a measure that will allow big-box retail into town. The move had been strongly opposed, again by activists fearful that having chain retailers out by Interstate 90 would hurt the environment for businesses operating in Ellensburg's quaint old downtown.