Gavilan College board wants future campus to have athletic
fields, downtown campus unlikely
The Gavilan College Board voted Tuesday to ensure the future San
Benito campus will be large enough to serve double the amount of
students currently attending their offices at the Briggs Building
in downtown Hollister.
It all but ensures that a downtown campus is out of the picture,
because a
”
full campus,
”
as the agenda item was described, is one graced with athletic
fields and enough facilities to accommodate at least 1,000. The
college’s extension at the Briggs Building presently serves 1,500
students, and college officials anticipate a need to serve 2,500
students by the time the new campus is built in 2020 or 2030.
Gavilan College board wants future campus to have athletic fields, downtown campus unlikely
The Gavilan College Board voted Tuesday to ensure the future San Benito campus will be large enough to serve double the amount of students currently attending their offices at the Briggs Building in downtown Hollister.
It all but ensures that a downtown campus is out of the picture, because a “full campus,” as the agenda item was described, is one graced with athletic fields and enough facilities to accommodate at least 1,000. The college’s extension at the Briggs Building presently serves 1,500 students, and college officials anticipate a need to serve 2,500 students by the time the new campus is built in 2020 or 2030.
The agenda item passed unanimously. During the same meeting, the trustees approved an ad hoc committee of four trustees who will hold discussions with the San Benito public on the issue. So far, the community’s reception to the board’s favored campus site near the Hollister Airport has been cool, if not downright opposed.
“It’s analogous to when San Benito County put Gavilan here,” said trustee Laura Perry, after the meeting in the board chambers on the main campus. “And I know there was a clamor about putting San Benito County Junior College [Gavilan’s original name] in the boondocks of Gilroy. Now it’s grown and come into it’s own and accepted.”
Perry is among the four who will serve on the Site Acquisition Sub-Committee. The others are trustees Elvira Robinson, Kent Childs and Deb Smith.
“Now the board has to take care of the needs of the future campus, not just the present one,” Perry added. “We’re not just looking five or 10 years down the road. We’re considering the needs 20 to 30 years from now.”
Those who have spoken against the proposed location near the airport argue there is no need for a full campus, and have pushed for other sites closer to downtown. At a recent forum trustees held in Hollister, resident Tony Ruiz said he wants officials to consider an area on Park Hill, where the city Public Works Department is located. But officials have said the area for sale there is too confined and sloped.
Critics say the site near the airport is a particularly bad idea because city officials are entertaining the idea of expanding the airport into a private jet port to accommodate business travelers to the area, and to bring more light industry to Hollister. Gavilan officials are waiting for a ruling from the state college board on the 80 acres they want to buy from Ken Gimelli for the future campus. It could be that the proposed site is, indeed, too close to the airport.
In the meantime — perhaps 150 days, Gavilan officials estimate — they will look into the possibility of other campus sites.
“During the 150 days they’ll look at other properties and have more community forums,” said college spokeswoman Jan Bernstein-Chargin. “But if we don’t acquire the property before the moratorium is lifted, there may not be another opportunity like this to get it.”
Since a sewage pond busted in May 2002 spilling 15 million gallons of treated wastewater into the San Benito River, Hollister has been under a state-mandated sewage hookup moratorium – hence, a building moratorium – until a new sewage treatment facility is built. The date for the plant to come online keeps getting pushed back, and is now estimated to take until 2009.
During a forum on the issue last month, Ruiz said he has a plan for a new location – other than the airport site – but has not divulged the details to college officials. He also has suggested placing several downtown parcels together in order to fulfill the ‘full campus’-size site college trustees have now made prerequisite for the project.
Others are offering to sell properties to the college, including Richard Place, the controversial candidate running for the District 3 Board of Supervisors seat, challenging incumbent Supervisor Chair Pat Loe. Place recently gave Gavilan President Steve Kinsella a tour of a property near San Benito High School, which Bernstein-Chargin said would not have been acceptable for the new campus.
“It turned out to be unworkable because of the Calaveras Fault running through it, and a lot of it seemed to be close to river bottoms,” she said.
Bernstein-Chargin said that according to state requirements, campuses can not be located in flood plains or near earthquake fault lines, nor can they take up prime ag land.
College officials said they would host another community forum on the issue near the end of April. Meanwhile, the Site Acquisition Sub-Committee is going to organize a telephone survey of county residents to find how the majority feels about the site near the airport. Only a handful of citizens attended the first forum in Hollister last month.
“I’ve had phone calls from both sides [of the issue],” trustee Perry said. “We want to get a representative cross-section of the San Benito community and get the input of people who may not have been aware of the forum we had. The sub-committee is hoping to find if other properties come to the surface, perhaps by putting together parcels.”
