San Diego County’s community college districts are in a construction frenzy, reaping the benefits of a statewide measure approved by voters seven years ago. Proposition 39 in November 2000 allowed school districts to put facilities bond measures on the ballot requiring only a 55 percent voter approval for passage as opposed to the previous two-thirds requirement.

Although Prop. 39 required extra accountability — such as the formation of citizen oversight committees — it opened the floodgates for the construction of long-delayed educational facilities. While the number of bond elections hasn’t increased since that time, the passage rate has and the amount of funding authorized statewide in these elections has almost doubled.

“It has been enormously beneficial, first and foremost to the students,” says Dana Quittner, associate chancellor at Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District, which passed a $207 million bond measure in 2002 (Prop. R), a key funding source for many of the district’s new and planned educational facilities.

Grossmont-Cuyamaca

In the Grossmont-Cuyamaca district, which has a student enrollment of 26,000, completed projects include a science laboratory building, a digital arts and sculpture complex, a learning and technology resource center and parking lot improvements on the Grossmont campus in El Cajon and a science and technology center, an automotive technology complex and parking lot expansions at the Cuyamaca campus in Rancho San Diego.

Grossmont’s $19.7 million, two-story, 38,000-square-foot science laboratory building opened in the spring and was the district’s answer to decades of cramped quarters, aging equipment and a chronic shortage of labs. The $17.5 million digital arts and sculpture complex was dedicated in February. The $7.5 million, 43,300-square-foot learning and technology resource center was finished in 2004.

The $25.1 million science and technology center at Cuyamaca College, a 59,668-square-foot building, opened this year. It contains laboratory space for life sciences, physical sciences and computer and information sciences and is anchored by a ground-floor, open access computer center. Twenty-eight faculty offices are included. The district spent $3.7 million to renovate a 29-year old building on the Cuyamaca campus into an automotive technology complex. The project, completed in 2005, included a computer lab with automotive diagnostic equipment.

The Grossmont-Cuyamaca district will be spending more than $129 million in local and state bond funds over the next three years for several other projects.

On the campus of Cuyamaca College, a $44.6 million, 88,590-square-foot communication arts building is scheduled to open in early 2008. A 47,000-square-foot, $18.9 million student center opened in October. Also in the works is a 50,570-square-foot, $25 million business and computer and information science building projected for completion in spring 2010.

At the Grossmont campus, the district will remodel two buildings into an exercise science and wellness complex of 28,000 square feet at a projected cost of $8.7 million and final completion in August 2008. A $24.5 million, three-level parking structure for up to 800 vehicles is to be completed by fall 2008. A 58,140-square-foot, $24.7 million health and physical science complex is to break ground next summer and be completed in spring 2010.

Palomar Community College District

Palomar College opened its $35 million natural sciences building on the San Marcos campus in August.

Palomar just opened its three-story, 107,000-square-foot, $35 million natural sciences building in San Marcos, the beginning of an anticipated $1 billion in new construction projects over the next decade. “It’s been a vision of ours for the past 10 years,” says Bonnie Dowd, assistant superintendent and vice president of finance and administrative services, of the new structure. It was partly financed with $5 million from the $694 million Prop. M bond measure of last November — the largest successful general obligation bond issue in the state from a single-campus college district. The campus has a student enrollment of 31,000.

Under the district’s master plan, 15 campus buildings will be torn down and rebuilt and 15 others will be remodeled. The district paid $38 million in June for 83.6 acres of land in Fallbrook for construction of an education center complex of from 75,000 to 100,000 square feet. It would open in 2010 or 2011. The district has an education center in Escondido and is looking at available land in the southern portion of the 2,500-square-mile district for another education center complex.

In December or January, the district will start renovating an existing campus structure into a nursing and dental assisting building, a $4 million to $5 million project.

Southwestern Community College District

Southwestern College’s $5.6 million San Ysidro Higher Education Center is set to break ground in six months.

Southwestern College’s Chula Vista campus has an enrollment of more than 18,000 students and a decentralized enrollment strategy of building comprehensive teaching centers in communities served by the district. Last month it opened its Higher Education Center at Otay Mesa with funds from an $89 million bond measure in 2000. The center can accommodate 5,000 students. It has 15 classrooms, four science labs, three computer labs and support services.

The district also has a Higher Education Center in National City and in another six months will break ground on a third center in San Ysidro, a $5.6 million, 18,000-square-foot, two-story building that will serve about 2,000 students. It will be built on the site of an existing one-story, 7,500-square-foot center, which will be torn down.

Southwestern completed a $6 million child development center on the Chula Vista campus 18 months ago and will spend $6.5 million to revamp two music buildings to offer a recording arts and technology program. Instructor Jay Henry, a music in–dus–try veteran, says the recording studio in the complex will be comparable to commercial studios. Classes in the renovated buildings are to be offered in the fall of 2008.

San Diego Community College District

The vocational technology center planned for City College, in the design stage, is estimated to cost between $39 million and $41 million.

The San Diego Community College District consists of three colleges — City, Mesa and Miramar — with a combined enrollment estimated at 50,000. In addition to new building construction, there has been extensive renovation at all three campuses. When all renovations are completed, the price tag is estimated at more than $25 million.

At City College, projects in the design phase include a child development center costing between $9 million and $11 million and a vocational technology center costing between $39 million and $41 million.

The district also expects to spend up to $46 million in approved bond funds for land acquisition near the Downtown campus.

A health center costing from $16 million to $18 million is in the design stage at Mesa College along with a $31 million renovation and build-out of a student services facility. Remodeling of the campus visual arts program facilities, a $2 million project, is under way.

The Miramar campus has several projects in the design phase, including a $34 million-$38 million library and learn–ing resource center, a $17 million-$20 million technology building and a $17 million-$20 million arts and humanities building.