The Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District is undergoing a facelift unprecedented in its recent history. With six buildings under construction at $70 million, we have the most construction going on of any college district in the state,” says Dana Quittner, the district’s director of intergovernmental relations, economic development and public information.

While the current renovations and new construction in the East County district might rival other projects across the state, it is not the only San Diego area community college district to take on such ambitious plans.

Southwestern, San Diego, Palomar and MiraCosta all have projects under way or on the books, administrators report. Some of those are thanks to bond measures. Others had been planned for years until scheduling and money permitted the green light.

Consider the numbers — four projects in the MiraCosta district totaling about $31 million; one under way at Palomar in San Marcos, with others in the pipeline; Grossmont-Cuyamaca’s six; Southwestern’s numerous completed projects, plus others; and San Diego’s 23 projects, each with several buildings in some cases, among three campuses and other facilities.

And none of that takes into account what’s going on at local universities. UCSD and SDSU are experiencing building booms of their own.

McCarthy Building Cos. is working on UCSD’s new $30 million, 110,000-square-foot Student Academic Services building designed by San Diego architect Rob Wellington Quigley. McCarthy also recently completed construction on the $17 million expansion and renovation of the Biomedical Library.

At San Diego State, the new $34.8 million, six-story College of Arts and Letters building opened this fall and is now the largest academic building on campus, says Jason Foster, the university’s media relations director. The $28.5 million, 75,000-square-foot Calpulli Center will house student health, counseling, psychological and disability services. SDSU also dedicated its new $14.3 million BioScience Center earlier this year and expects the first laboratory to be in full operation by October.

Why all the work at colleges and universities?

“If you look at science labs 20 or 30 years ago, oh, my gosh, have times changed,” Quittner says of the outdated facilities the Grossmont district is replacing.

Palomar faced a similar lab situation, so it is building a new science complex and eventually demolishing the old one for other new projects.

“The need for that is really based upon the lack of facilities to grow,” adds Kelley Hudson-MacIsaac, Palomar’s facilities planning manager, echoing the problem of aging facilities. “There was such a demand for science classes that we basically just ran out of lab space.”

Palomar’s three-story, about 100,000-square-foot science complex is the first new instructional building on the San Marcos campus since 1970, Hudson-MacIsaac says.

“Many of the community colleges, as you know, were designed and built in the ’50s or ’60s. Very antiquated facilities,” explains Michael Wilkes of architectural firm Delawie Wilkes Rodrigues Barker, which has done work for the San Diego Community College District. The same goes for universities, he says, where buildings built 40 or 50 years ago were not meant to be long-term. “They were designed to be immediate buildings to solve a problem, and they’re wearing out. Buildings that were, I hate to say, almost prison-like in their exterior appearance.”

Form and function dictate the design of today’s college and university buildings, Wilkes says.

“Buildings are now WiFi. Buildings now have PowerPoint. The very best buildings understand the importance of natural day lighting,” he continues. “And so we’re finding that the new generation of schools really are on the cutting edge in terms of all these factors.”

These demands place particular challenges on designing college projects now, notes Robert Noble, CEO and design principal with Tucker Sadler architects, which has also done work for the San Diego district and is working on SDSU’s new Alumni Center.

“There has to be a tremendous amount of flexibility needed for future changes,” Noble says.

One of Southwestern’s noteworthy projects was the gutting and rebuilding of its old library into a new $9 million “one-stop” center for student services, completed in 2003, says John Wilson, the district’s senior director of business operations and facilities planning. A $25 million, 70,000-square-foot higher education center is now under construction in Otay Mesa. Southwestern also plans to build a new facility for the San Ysidro Education Center in 2008.

With the continuing need for new facilities, community college districts seem to be staying on the bond wagon for the future. Along with San Diego’s Prop. S, Grossmont’s $207 million Prop. R and Southwestern’s $89.3 million Prop. AA, Palomar’s governing board has given the green light for a $694 million bond this November. San Diego trustees have also approved a new $870 million bond for the Nov. 7 ballot.

For the San Diego Community College District, bonds will likely help its Downtown City College campus build up instead of out, says Damon Schamu, vice chancellor of facilities services.

“City College is landlocked,” he says. The district is in the process of acquiring land for part of the expansion through negotiations with property owners rather than eminent domain, Schamu notes.

Bonds provide particular advantages, Hudson-MacIsaac says.

“With having some local money, you can fast-track projects and leverage your local money with state money and get a bigger bang for the local taxpayer’s dollar,” she says.

MiraCosta has yet to seek a bond. But that could soon change, says Bonnie Hall, MiraCosta’s public information officer. Trustees approved a comprehensive master plan that will consider a bond in 2008.

— Roman S. Koenig